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Introduction: The concept of intellectual honesty is often rather narrowly defined in an academic setting, where its usual purpose is to combat unethical behaviors such as plagiarism or cheating on exams. Here I shall offer a broader notion of intellectual honesty, as I feel that the narrow definition does not provide a sufficiently high ideal. While it is clearly expected that each student shall exhibit honesty in taking exams and in representing the authorship of his/her work, there are other dimensions to intellectual honesty that impinge on every aspect of thinking and communicating. Here is a terse but broad definition, which will require extensive elaboration:
A Broad Definition of Intellectual Honesty:
Discussion: Clearly this definition prohibits cheating on exams, which would violate honesty in the acquisition of ideas (inappropriately copying the ideas of another person). It also prohibits plagiarism, which would violate honesty in the transmission of ideas (misrepresenting the authorship of a body of work by presenting someone else's work as your own). Broader Implications: One can take the notion of intellectual honesty much further, and it is my sincere hope that each of you will strive to do so, not only in this class but in every station of life. By far the most subtle of the words in the above definition is analysis, and it is the one that is most difficult to mandate or to verify externally; it is therefore the one that rests most heavily upon honesty. It is incumbent upon each of us to avoid or mitigate fallacious reasoning, whether in the narrow confines of an academic or professional discipline, or the amorphous and uncertain circumstances of daily life. The exercise of sound reasoning, to the extent of our individual abilities, is a large part of the analysis aspect of intellectual honesty. This may seem odd at first. After all, isn't reason simply the application of logic to objective facts? What possible bearing might honesty have outside of acquisition and transmission, as discussed above? To see the connection one must realize that we, as human beings, are more than mere purveyors of logic. We inherently generalize, categorize, prioritize, and harmonize what we see, and most of this takes place without our conscious awareness. While these aspects of thinking are of inestimable value, they also possess certain dangers; for example, they can inadvertently lead us into hasty judgments, and cause selective "blindness" toward new information. (The latter tendency is known as confirmation bias by psychologists.) Intellectual honesty is one mechanism that can mitigate such judgments, or prejudices, by forcing us to examine how we arrived at them, and cajoling us to seek and consider alternatives. Perhaps the two most universal informal fallacies in thinking are generalizing from incomplete information and overlooking alternative explanations. (See A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston, for an excellent discussion of these two "great fallacies.") Once we become aware of these pitfalls in thinking, it then becomes a matter of choice as to whether we attempt to compensate for them. Knowing the potentials for error, attempting to overcome them is thus a matter of honesty. Further Reading: There are a great many web sites that discuss intellectual honesty, often under the name "academic honesty". For example, see the discussions at Simon Fraser University and The American University.
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