Intellectual honesty is an ethical framework wherein individuals strive to apply rigorous critical thinking to all information they encounter, being fair and open-minded in their approach. Instead of seeking to confirm pre-existing views, they take an unbiased approach, testing ideas against valid standards of evidence, free of bias towards outcomes. It is also essential to practice intellectual honesty in scholarship, where it is important to correctly give credit to those who’ve made contributions to the field of research, and to be forthright about the accuracy and limitations of findings.

See also: free will, virtue ethics, emergence, cognitive science