An example of a fallacy of composition

One more point about the town hall meeting with Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI) (see below for full experience). Sensenbrenner kept insisting at the meeting that he was "intellectually honest" which he took to mean "that I won't tell you what I think you want to hear but what I actually think." And, I can attest to the fact that he did tell us what he thought regardless of what everybody else was saying.

But, we should note that this is a fallacy of composition. It assumes (wrongly) that the whole of intellectual honesty is contained in the part of it. It is true that a part of intellectual honesty is the willingness to tell others what you think regardless of whether you think it is what they want to hear. But this is not the whole of 'intellectual honesty', but merely a part of it. We might say that telling others truthfully what you think might be considered a virtue of declaration, that is, a virtue regarding declaring to others what your true opinion is. There are other aspects of intellectual honesty, however, such as that one should be willing to revise one's position when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary, that one should seek out the best available evidence, that one should consider what justice (for all) requires and so forth. These are virtues of deliberation and must necessarily be a part of intellectual honesty.

In this respect, Sensenbrenner was attempting to claim for himself the whole of intellectual honesty when, in fact, he had fulfilled only one part of it. This is technically a fallacy of composition, of flip-flopping between the whole and the part to give the impression that the whole is contained in what is, in fact, merely a part of the term being used.