"Utter Honesty": The Classical Dialectic and Rhetoric In The Public Interest

Scott, Grayson

Publication

"Utter Honesty": The Classical Dialectic and Rhetoric In The Public Interest

Scott, Grayson

Date

2018

Additional date(s)

2018-05-19

Abstract

This study addresses the modern-day infringements on scientific integrity and academic freedom present in the sciences that lead to censorship by omission. Such censorship injures and prevents the knowledge-process, a highly public process that is necessary in discovering "truth." In some cases, this creates expensive public health problems and sets a dangerous precedent for potentially catastrophic public policymaking that denies the public the truth or the very opportunity to speak about the truth. Representative cases will be examined in this study to demonstrate the need for a new rhetoric and language of dispute. The lost dispute language of the classical dialectic, as developed by the early Greek sophists, Socrates, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas, provides this language in a way that prioritizes the public's right to know and interact openly with truth-efforts. Further awareness and education of the diction of this lost language is necessary for the public's interest.