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1. I raised this question a long time ago on this very site, but it’s part of our disappeared archive. The only reference I can find to it is here:

   http://ben.casnocha.com/2007/10/what-does-it-me.html

   I’m with Yglesias, or rather, he’s with me: you don’t add anything meaningful to the term “honesty” by prefacing it with “intellectual.” Unless there’s some form of non-intellectual honesty.

   — Alan Jacobs · Sep 13, 02:25 PM · #

2. I’m with Noah. Politico is obviously using it to mean “not ideologically blindered spinmeisters like Paul Begala or Hugh Hewitt” — i.e., that the writers have viewpoints but that they are willing to stray from their side’s talking points.

   I think the implication is that you consider evidence contrary to your existing view honestly and that you espouse positions that your intellect leads you to, even if they contradict your self interest.

   Maybe there’s a more apposite phrase, but I read intellectually honest to mean that your intellectual approach is constructed in a way to be honest to you – that you have minimized the intellectual structure that would lead you to believe things consistent with your self-interest rather than consistent their truth.

   p.s.: Hi Alan! I love talking to you, and wish your posts had comments enabled.

   — J Mann · Sep 13, 02:32 PM · #

3. Alan: I do think there’s an important distinction you’re eliding.

   I would listen to an honest advocate’s arguments. That’s what every juror does, as well as every informed voter. I wouldn’t expect to hear “the whole truth” about a subject – but I would expect not to be lied to. So there is value to me in the speech of someone who is not intellectually independent, but who is honest.

   But I wouldn’t bother listening to a liar.

   So: if we want to distinguish, on the one hand, liars from honest people and, on the other hand, advocates from the intellectually independent, we need three terms: one to mean “liars,” one to mean, “honest advocates,” and one to mean “honest and intellectually independent.”

   — Noah Millman · Sep 13, 02:49 PM · #

4. Intellectual dishonesty is pretending you don’t understand the meaning of “intellectual honesty”.

   — Mike Farmer · Sep 13, 03:33 PM · #

5. Hmmm. I’ve always taken “intellectually honest” to mean that one does not make arguments that are in contradiction to other positions one has put forward, without acknowledging one’s previous position has changed; and that this can apply to some who is an advocate as well as to someone who is not.

   I suppose that means that one can be an honest advocate without being intellectually honest. Best to just lie to everyone about about everything and avoid the issue entirely!

   — Tony Comstock · Sep 13, 03:44 PM · #

6. The dimensions are consistency vs. effectiveness, and relative priority.

   — KVS · Sep 13, 03:59 PM · #

7. Noah, I’m still waiting to hear what the adjective “intellectual” adds, and how intellectual honesty/dishonesty differs from other kinds. If you’re “making the arguments you are ‘supposed’ to make and/or avoiding making arguments that you think are true that you aren’t ‘supposed’ to make,” that’s simply dishonesty. The adjective “intelectual” is totally superfluous.

   — Alan Jacobs · Sep 13, 04:16 PM · #

8. Alan, do you make a distinction between untrue things people say because they lack command of facts, or lack self-awareness, and untrue things offered to intentionally mislead?

   — Tony Comstock · Sep 13, 04:36 PM · #

9. Alan says, in effect, that everything ‘intellectually dishonest’ is more simply ‘dishonest,’ so why not use the elegant ‘dishonest’ and quit trying to carve out subgenre distinctions. Or he’s complaining about the word ‘intellectual’ being used as the subgenre’s callsign. Can really tell, maybe a little of both. Both Alan and Noah, i think, agree that there is a phenomenon in the world which justifies our distinguishing between lying to the dentist and propaganda/demagoguery. The latter is an assault on the dialectic ideal, whereas the former is not.

   — KVS · Sep 13, 04:43 PM · #

10. Boy, do I feel cut. (The “still waiting” to Noah kind of burns . . .)

    I wonder if Alan didn’t read my comment or just thought it wasn’t insightful enough to merit response. I really did try to get at what I thought the term “intellectual” added, although maybe I wasn’t as clear as I should be.

    — J Mann · Sep 13, 05:25 PM · #

11. J Mann, so sorry! I just happened to see Noah’s comment and shoot off a quick response. You write, “but I read intellectually honest to mean that your intellectual approach is constructed in a way to be honest to you.” Which just leaves me again asking what kind of honesty there might be that isn’t “intellectual,” or what is added to the meaning of your sentence by the word “intellectual.” Take it out, and how exactly does the meaning change? I’m not saying it doesn’t, I’m just saying that I don’t understand how it does.

    Tony: “Alan, do you make a distinction between untrue things people say because they lack command of facts, or lack self-awareness, and untrue things offered to intentionally mislead?” Absolutely I do!

    Anyway, what we have on this comment thread, taken as a whole, is a) sarcasm, b) hurt feelings, and c) a lack of progress in clarifying the issues. Which is what happens on almost all comment threads, which (in turn) is why I don’t enable comments if I don’t have to, and why I am bailing on this conversation!

    — Alan Jacobs · Sep 13, 05:51 PM · #

12. To me, “dishonest” usually refers to knowing factual misstatements. “Intellectually dishonest” refers to such things as making arguments that the speaker knows don’t ultimately hold water, but which he thinks (or knows from experience) will impress people who haven’t studied or thought about the relevant issues. Of course, one could broaden the term “dishonest” to include the latter category, but I don’t think that’s the common usage.

    An example of intellectual dishonesty would be someone who states that the First Amendment should only protect “speech” and never “conduct”—one might make this argument if one wanted to ban flag-burning. Anyone who has thought about and studied the issues for more than an hour or two will see that this distinction is untenable as a rationale for deciding cases. Alternatively, someone who wants to ban racist or sexist speech might say that the First Amendment should protect “free speech but not hate speech”—again, anyone who thinks about the issues for long will see that this rule cannot be maintained. Neither one of these statements involves a misstatement of fact, but both, when uttered by someone who knows better, are intellectually dishonest. In contrast, if uttered by a first year law student, they might be intellectually honest, but misguided, and it would be the professor’s job to explain why.

    — y81 · Sep 13, 05:57 PM · #

13. Thinking about it a little more, there are presumably a few levels of “honesty” that you could define in someone who is offering you information. There might be better terms for some of these levels, and I’m sure the formal rhetoric people have some specific terms, but here are mine.

    1) Technical (or “Clintonian”) honesty: The lowest possible standard. To the best of the speaker’s knowledge, there exists at least one interpretation of the speaker’s statement that the speaker reasonably believes to be true. The speaker will not make any effort to determine whether that intepretation is the one that her audience will reasonably understand from the statement. (“There is no sexual relationship between the President and Ms. Lewinsky.”)

    2) Factual honesty: The speaker will make reasonable efforts to ensure that the most reasonable interpretations of her statements by her anticipated audience are factually true to the best of her existing knowledge. She won’t necessarily go to extra effort to test her existing knowedge unless convient, and won’t make an effort to present or address arguments against her point unless convenient. (IMHO, the case for war in Iraq. For the most part, I think Bush/Blair/Powell honestly believed what they said. Their primary offense, other than being wrong in hindsight, was that they just didn’t present the evidence against their case or even really look for it.)

    3) Intellectual honesty: The speaker comports herself in a way most likely to facilitate constructive intellectual exchange. Not only does she meet the two standards of honesty above, she also investigates evidence contrary to her worldview, and acknowledges and addresses the best evidence contrary to her world view. (IMHO, Jim Manzi and Jonathan Rauch are good examples of this model, but maybe that’s my bias since I tend to agree with or be convinced by them).

    Alan – thanks for the response.

    — J Mann · Sep 13, 06:00 PM · #

14. Alan:

    A lawyer is obliged to make the best case possible for his client. He is not supposed to lie, or to manufacture, hide or destroy evidence. But he is also not supposed to actively undermine his own case. He’s supposed to make the best arguments he can for his client’s cause – that’s his ethical obligation, even if he disagrees with his client’s cause.

    Based on your definition of honesty, someone I would consider an honest lawyer is ethically obligated to be dishonest. Popular sentiment would indicate that you’re on strong ground saying that all lawyers are liars, but I’ll take the less-popular side of that one and say that I think advocates have an important role to play, and that you can be an honest advocate – but that you can’t expect to get the whole truth even from an honest advocate.

    On a separate note, I think J Mann is right that we view different kinds of dishonesty differently. We think someone who is consciously lying is engaging in a different kind of behavior – a more reprehensible kind, generally – than someone who is, for example, not being honest with himself or herself. Plenty of people make arguments in order to convince themselves of one thing or another as much as to convince anybody else. Somewhere deep down, they may know these arguments aren’t true. Is someone who does that sort of thing a liar? That seems a bit harsh.

    Ultimately, I feel like calling anybody “honest” is overpraise. But there’s a lot of space between total, no-holds-barred honesty and outright Richard III-level mendacity, and I would argue that some of that space is occupied by people who are behaving ethically and who, therefore, I’d feel uncomfortable calling dishonest.

    — Noah Millman · Sep 13, 06:03 PM · #

15. J Mann:

    I very much like your Iraq War example. I’m not so naive as to believe that the Bush Administration didn’t ever lie outright, but I’m sure they actually believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But why did they believe this? Not because they followed an honest inquiry to get the facts – rather, they constructed a dishonest process to come to the conclusion they wanted, and then convinced themselves that the process was good because the results were what they wanted. That’s practically a reader’s guide to intellectual dishonesty – lying to yourself, arguments constructed to make a case rather than find the truth, etc. – but it really is something different from simple lying. And, indeed, the sharp dichotomy between “lying” and “not lying” is part of what enabled that kind of intellectual dishonesty – a lot of people convinced themselves that as long as nobody was actually giving them the lie direct then all was well.

    — Noah Millman · Sep 13, 06:12 PM · #

16. This is an intellectually honest thread.
    But I must disagree with another aspect of Noah’s definition. I can’t see how you can call a person dishonest if they avoid making argument that they thing are true, but are inconvenient. Many of us work for The Man, in one of his many manifestations. We can’t make public arguments that go against the interest of The Man—not if we value our employment, or our reputation for integrity. An agent is supposed to be faithful to their principal (with some limits, of course). You’re not faithful if you air their intellectual dirty linen.
    This is not a society of Jeffersonian freeholders or trustafarians, much as some academics like to think. I don’t think you go very far in limiting a definition of “intellectual honesty” to those folk.

    — Joe S. · Sep 13, 07:49 PM · #

17. If I am on trial, I want an honest lawyer to defend me, honest in the sense that he will do his best for me in return for the pay we agreed upon. I don’t want an “intellectually honest” advocate in the sense that he might announce to the jury that he’s thought it over and concluded I’m probably guilty.

    — Steve Sailer · Sep 14, 01:54 AM · #

18. The big issue with intellectual honesty among intellectuals (as opposed to advocates) is how far will one go in using Occam’s Razor to understand and explain how the world works. Personally, I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor. Wielding Occam’s Butterknife usually pays better, however.

    — Steve Sailer · Sep 14, 01:57 AM · #

19. I think J Mann is headed in the right direction. I think the “intellectual” in intellectual honesty refers to the use of intellect processes to determine the truth as much as possible. That means things like examining your feelings and thier sources, keeping your biases and underlying motives in mind, searching for and admiting evidence counter to your argument, testing your conclusions, etc…. Basically being intellectually rigorous in trying to determine and express the truth. It’s hopefully a habit of mind that people develop.

    I think the idea that we should use rigorus thinking to figure out what is true is a very important concept (at least in the way I concieve of it) and the techniques should be taught in schools.

    — cw · Sep 14, 03:12 AM · #

20. When you start modifying “honesty”, your options don’t end with “intellectual” — there’s emotional honesty, as well, which gets to what you used to be called canniness. If you hire an advocate, you expect them to argue for you as best they can, but you need them to keep how they feel about it subordinate to their thinking — to your strategy, what will best serve your interests. Everybody knows advocates who make really smart, detailed, but ultimately unpersuasive arguments for their cause because they become so emotionally committed to the advocacy, they forget it is simply a means to an end.

    That’s where “intellectual” honesty becomes important. When you hire an advocate who tells you privately that you’re emotionally committed to a strategy that will fail, in their judgment, you can either throw good money after bad and insist that they carry it out unchanged, or you can respect their intellectual honesty and change it. (Or get a new advocate.)

    In the past decade or two, the Right has developed a Wurlitzer for wedge issues, e.g., Matt Labash’s candid assessment: Conservative journalists “feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media… We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. I’m glad we found it actually. “

    It does progressives no good to imitate that, because it abandons our advantage that Colbert explained as reality’s well-known liberal bias. But that’s where emotional honesty becomes important again, because many progressive advocates want to lose gloriously rather than to work with the intellectual — and political — discipline necessary to win.

    — theAmericanist · Sep 14, 12:12 PM · #

21. I assume that the term “intellectual honesty” describes someone with the courage of his convictions and that those convictions are rational, sane, logical, and consistent. Why distinguish “intellectual honesty” from “honesty”? The word “honesty” describes a virtue that we hope for in all beings, although we find it less often than we desire. A five-year-old can be honest. We would not look for intellectual honesty in a five-year-old however. You might think of the typical Frank Capra hero who pursued a principled, honest, intellectual path in the face of evil doers who were cynical, tyrannical, and violent. In Capra’s lovely world, intellectual honesty prevailed.

    — LDM · Sep 15, 08:08 PM · #

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