Intellectual Honesty

Introduction

Wikipedia [Sept 2015] introduces intellectual honesty as follows:

Intellectual honesty is an applied method of problem solving, characterized by an unbiased, honest attitude, which can be demonstrated in a number of different ways:

• • One’s personal beliefs do not interfere with the pursuit of truth;
  • Formal Communication Layouts are used on paper, tv, radio and internet;
  • Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may contradict one’s hypothesis;
  • Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another;
  • References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism is avoided.

Wikipedia defines intellectual honesty but our topic is its converse ‘intellectual dishonesty’. We can take its five characteristics of intellectual honesty and read their converses as characteristics of intellectual dishonesty. The sceptic website, RationalWiki, defines intellectual honesty as,

“Intellectual honesty is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas. A person is being intellectually honest when he or she, knowing the truth, states that truth.” [Sept 2015]

It describes intellectual dishonesty as omitting relevant facts and information when such things contradict one’s hypothesis, presenting facts in a biased manner, deliberately ignoring facts and arguments that would undermine one’s position, and knowingly using a logical fallacy such as a straw man argument or poisoning the well.

These failings are certainly that, and if they are knowingly practised, the person is intellectually dishonest. If they are carried out unknowingly, then the person needs education and hasn’t been intentionally dishonest.

In debate, you may be accused of being intellectually dishonest and this may be a charge centred more or less on one of the failings listed above. In an argument, such a charge is ad hominem – against the person – and it avoids the point you have put forward. The charge may be true or false, but it may be a debating tactic to avoid your point. The charge may be levelled against you because you have presented a strong point and the other person finds your argument uncomfortable. When presented with an ad hominem charge like this, you could equally hypothesize about why your dialogue partner has made the charge and your wonderings are potentially ad hominem – against your partner.

Beliefs and Bias

As we have said in earlier articles in this series – ad hominem argument is not about logic – it is about psychology. If you respond by asking your opponent in what we way you are being intellectually dishonest, they may be precise or vague in their explanation. For example, suppose they say that you are presenting facts in a biased way. You object. They give an example. You defend your presentation of the facts and suggest that they understand the facts incorrectly. They counter-object. The upshot is that you have been deflected away from having your opponent counter the substance of your original point into a defence of yourself and your treatment of the facts. What has happened is that your original point has been lost and you are somewhere in a morass of vague poorly thought out defensive responses.

Let us suppose that you are biased and you have twisted the facts. You may have done this knowingly, in which case this is dishonest, but let us suppose that you did not do it knowingly – in this case, you have a failing but it is not dishonest. What about the situation where the facts are the issue? ‘What are the facts?’ is the question. The facts are disputed. In this case, a charge of intellectual dishonesty over the facts at issue is a fallacy. As yet the facts have not been established.

Of course, one side may think the facts are established and you may think that they are not. If they charge you with intellectual dishonesty over the facts, and you are disputing the facts, they are showing that they have not accepted the terms of the discussion – which are – what are the facts?

The charge under review here is not that you are mistaken in a point of fact – that is a logical response to your point (even though you are the subject). The charge is that you are biased and twisting the facts. This is a vaguer charge with many possibilities. The facts could be any of those that touch on the issue that you are contending. But, as we have noted, a general charge of bias will move the argument away from the specifics of the point you had made into uncharted territory and the argument will get lost.

So, the best response to a charge of intellectual dishonesty in the form of bias is to park it for later consideration and return to the logic of the point you made. You might be biased and you may be unintentionally twisting facts to your case (cf. the earlier article on motivated reasoning). Your opponent is doing you a service by making the charge, but it is a charge for another discussion – one about you and possible failings in your knowledge. The issue at stake is the logic of the point you had put forward. What does your opponent think about it – if anything?

It’s always possible to argue with someone and keep the focus on the actual language being used to express point and counter-point. You could argue that this is the only Christ-like way for those in the ecclesia; perhaps in debate with those outside there is scope for ad hominem arguing. (There is plenty of biblical precedent.) When you focus on just the language there is a chance you both may come to agreement. As soon as it gets personal, it’s time to walk away.

When an opponent makes an ad hominem point like that of intellectual dishonesty, sometimes it is best to be silent, especially if the ground rules for debate have included an understanding that you both will focus on the point of disagreement between you. Silence can often be the only practical course – you appear to ignore the ad hominem charge – or sidestep it – in order to reiterate your original point. This can be the only possible kind of response because once you begin to defend an ad hominem charge, it is difficult to stop the dialogue spinning off down that path.

Wikipedia mentions ‘personal beliefs’ and presupposes that they might interfere with the pursuit of truth. In one sense, this is readily understood, but the logic of the presupposition is worth examining. If personal beliefs are true, it is difficult to see how they might interfere with the pursuit of truth. It seems intuitively obvious though that false beliefs might interfere because they are false. A second observation is that true beliefs might actually help guide the pursuit of truth because they flag contradictory or contrary propositions that come up in your investigations. The flag might lead you to revise your original beliefs or steer you away from the proposition you are considering.

Wikipedia may have in mind scientific investigation, but in matters of faith and biblical studies, personal beliefs would seem to be pivotal in the pursuit of truth. Are Bible readers intellectually dishonest if they let their personal beliefs guide interpretation? The obvious problem-case would be inspiration, inerrancy and archaeology. What does a personal belief in inerrancy do with archaeological ‘facts’? The question goes to the heart of the historico-critical method.[1]

As a first point, we might ask: could Wikipedia’s actual guidance, “One’s personal beliefs do not interfere with the pursuit of truth”, itself be the expression of a personal belief? If so, it would be ruled out in a pursuit of a true method of enquiry.[2] When we consider the values of the historico-critical method, and whether to adopt this method, or whether to limit its scope, Wikipedia’s guidance is of no help, because either side of the possibility of error (we allow or disallow the possibility of error) is a methodological principle.

If a method disallows inerrancy, and you believe in inerrancy, are you being dishonest if you practice that method? It depends. If you allow your belief to influence the results of your historico-critical investigations, then you are not being consistent and this is dishonest. But if you take the hypothetical reconstructions of the historico-critical method and place these alongside an historical reconstruction that uses a pre-critical method that has a commitment to inerrancy,[3] then this is consistent and no more than comparative work using different methodologies. You are then presented with a post-critical choice. In Wikipedia’s terms, your personal belief only influences your post-critical choice because you choose the results of the pre-critical method.

In debate, you may be inter-weaving points that rely on different methodologies, but your opponent may see this as intellectually dishonest if they fail to discriminate between things influenced by your personal beliefs and things dependent on pure historico-critical reasoning. Your dialogue partner may not be very good at following your train of thought. (And to be fair, you may be poor at explaining your points.)

However, we should mark a distinction between the pursuit of truth and hypothetical historical reconstruction as just one particular type of that pursuit. A method might exclude personal beliefs, but the more abstract notion of ‘the pursuit of truth’ has no intrinsic right to exclude personal beliefs.

A lot of biblical scholarship is hypothetical and tentative; scholars lament this situation. But there are harder ‘facts’ that challenge pre-critical reconstructions that assume a personal belief in inerrancy. These are usually about dates, names and numbers as well as the acceptance of the miraculous. It may be about these ‘facts’ that an opponent claims you are being intellectually dishonest because of your personal beliefs (about inerrancy).

The challenge here doesn’t come from the more tendentious hypothetical historical reconstructions about which you might well be sceptical and prefer the straightforward biblical reading. The challenge from the sceptic-opponent is that you should reject your pre-critical reading, because the contrary evidence evaluated alongside the biblical text, on a level playing field,[4] is far too strong to discount. If you refuse to do so, then this just shows that your personal beliefs are influencing your pursuit of truth. The challenge comes from the hard facts.

A sceptic-opponent might want to overthrow the Bible. A liberal-minded Christian will want to argue against inerrancy in favour of a different view of the Bible. In any event, a charge that you are being intellectually dishonest can quickly lead you into a philosophical defence of a method and inerrancy. If you go down this path in an argument, you leave behind the point you were making and your opponent has avoided addressing that point.

The correct response to a charge of intellectual dishonesty based on the influence of your own personal beliefs is to accept that a discussion of methods and beliefs is needed but that this is going to involve philosophy and theology. The question at issue is whether the argument you are making is otherwise logically sound and one that casts doubt on the opposing position. If your opponent doesn’t respond to your point in terms of its logic or its appeal to evidence, then s/he has in effect ended the discussion.

Conclusion

We have discussed intellectual dishonesty in the context of debate. A charge of intellectual dishonesty shifts the level in a discussion. You are discussing/arguing about a point and your opponent shifts the level from this content to the form of your discussion – how you’re discussing/arguing. It is a debating tactic. You may be at fault, but that is another kind of discussion. You should return your opponent to the point at hand and park the question of intellectual dishonesty. If your dialogue partner doesn’t follow, then the discussion is ended. It is only by keeping a focus on the content in a discussion that you will rigorously stick to matters of logic and evidence.

Charges of intellectual dishonesty should not be made in a public forum between the followers of Christ. They are a matter for private conversation. This is the principle of Matthew 18. This follows because ad hominem arguments are ‘against the person’ and if you have something against a fellow-believer, you should talk it over privately. The problem with following this guidance is that skilled debaters mix up arguments that address logic and evidence with arguments ‘against the person’. It takes a concerted effort to distinguish the two, especially if you want to win your point.