The Challenge of Intellectual Honesty
Intellectual honesty can be scary. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you hold an opinion that is unpopular? We want to think that the world will play by the rules laid out by John Stuart Mill in his excellent work, On Liberty. He wrote, “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” We want to hope that people will give us the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that it is okay to have different perspectives. No one ever has to agree with us, but we at least hope that we will be extended the courtesy of civilized discourse.
Unfortunately, this willingness to debate is becoming harder and harder to come by. In my personal life, I have greatly reduced the amount of even moderately controversial things I share on my social media accounts. Part of that is because I am trying to become less addicted to social media. Posting about controversial things brings on comments that I don’t want to spend tons of time responding to. That only makes my addiction stronger and is contrary to what I’m trying to do.
The other part of my step back from social media is directly related to the consequences of holding several unpopular opinions. I want to be intellectually honest. If I engage in certain debates, I am going to be honest about what I believe and where I stand. Nevertheless, there is an element of caution in how I go about this pursuit now.
The first thing I always want to determine is if the person I am conversing with actually has an interest in the topic at hand or only wants to set me up to call me some unkind names. During this past election season, I had some wonderful conversations with a friend of mine who shares very few of my political convictions. We were interested in the topic and in trying to understand what was going on in our country. Therefore, the discussions were fruitful; we were pursuing knowledge.
Secondly, I try to define my terms very carefully. In our era of cancellation, it is certainly not uncommon for someone’s words from five years ago, ten years ago, or fifty years ago to be resurrected, taken out of context, and raked over the coals because of a potential interpretation that would have never even been under consideration when those words were spoken or written. I can’t prevent that from happening to something that I have written. Unfortunately, people are going to do what they want, even if it is intellectually dishonest on their part. However, I can try to establish sufficient context for people to see what I mean. For example, let’s say I want to talk about a topic like social justice. That phrase comes loaded with presuppositions from both sides of the aisle. I can reduce the chances of my being misinterpreted if I carefully explain what I mean when I use the term social justice. Note that this does not eliminate the possibility of being proof texted and taken completely out of context. However, it does give me the opportunity to clarify if someone questions something I have written. I can point back to my original definition to provide the necessary context.
Third, and this is a tough one, I try to admit when I am wrong. If I write something that is factually wrong, I own up to it. If I realize that my thoughts were incomplete or incoherent, I try to clarify further. This step of intellectual honesty at least demonstrates to those around me that I am not so ingrained in my own ideology that I am unable to acknowledge error.
Intellectual honesty is a challenge right now. Honestly, I don’t want to be canceled, but more than that I want to be intellectually honest. However, I am going to try to abide by these steps I have outlined above. Hopefully that will lead me to engage in conversations that are worth having, are able to be clearly understood by all parties concerned, and are genuinely what I believe to the best of my knowledge. If I can have conversations like that, maybe I will get canceled someday. Maybe our culture will become so allergic to truth that I will find myself in a spot where I have to choose between comfort and intellectual honesty. I hope that I am ready when that time comes because the clean conscience that comes from intellectual honesty is worth whatever discomfort comes.