Principle of charity trades off epistemic rationality for efficiency and signaling of respect. An improved version of the technique is LCPW (or “steel man”), where you focus your attention on the best version of the argument made by your opponent that you yourself can reconstruct. You don’t require the improved argument to satisfy the exact wording used by the interlocutor, and more importantly don’t need to assume that it’s what they really mean, or pretend that you believe it’s what they mean. The evidence about which position the other person really holds often points in a different direction from where the best version of their position can be found, so it’s useful to keep separate mental buckets for these ideas.
So the improved version of your thesis is, “Don’t apply the principle of charity at all, use LCPW technique instead”. (As a bonus, steel manning your own beliefs means fixing your own epistemic errors.)
Principle of charity trades off epistemic rationality
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but the principle of charity entails not naively believing one’s first order guess of what one thinks the other person means and instead using motivated thinking in an attempt to somewhat counteract one’s biases such as one’s desire to win an argument. Fighting bias with bias is obviously problematic, but I wouldn’t describe it as trading away epistemic rationality.
An improved version of the technique is LCPW
As you said ”...importantly don’t need to assume that it’s what they really mean...it’s useful to keep separate mental buckets for these ideas, and very important to avoid conflating them.” The principle of charity is useful for reconstructing what was really meant, unlike LCPW, so each has an advantage over the other, and “improved” is not apt..
The principle of charity is useful for reconstructing what was really meant, unlike LCPW
Agreed that LCPW is not directly useful this way. On the other hand, if what you want is correct understanding of a question, it doesn’t matter what anyone really thought originally, only what is the answer; or for arguments, not what were the original arguments, but what are the actually important considerations. There is a failure mode in disagreements where opponents start arguing about what they really meant, finding ground for the verbal fight unrelated to the original topic, preventing useful progress.
If taken as a counter-bias against tendency to assume a less reasonable position than should be expected, principle of charity can somewhat help, but then there are better third alternatives to this technique that don’t share its glaring anti-epistemic flaws. For example, you search harder for possible reasonable interpretations, to make sure they are available for consideration, but retain expected bad interpretations in the distribution of possible intended meanings.
Huh, I’d never realized the connection between PoC and LCPW before. I’ll have to think about that, although I wouldn’t necessarily say LCPW is a replacement for PoC. They solve different problems in practice—like lessdazed said, PoC can be more effective at countering overconfidence in knowing what you think your opponent meant, if that’s the goal. Would you mind giving an example though?
ETA:
For example, you search harder for possible reasonable interpretations, to make sure they are available for consideration, but retain expected bad interpretations in the distribution of possible intended meanings.
I agree that if you’re going to use PoC, you shouldn’t apply it internally and unilaterally—if responding as though your opponent made a good argument requires some unlikely assumptions, you should still be well aware of that.
Principle of charity trades off epistemic rationality for efficiency and signaling of respect. An improved version of the technique is LCPW (or “steel man”), where you focus your attention on the best version of the argument made by your opponent that you yourself can reconstruct. You don’t require the improved argument to satisfy the exact wording used by the interlocutor, and more importantly don’t need to assume that it’s what they really mean, or pretend that you believe it’s what they mean. The evidence about which position the other person really holds often points in a different direction from where the best version of their position can be found, so it’s useful to keep separate mental buckets for these ideas.
So the improved version of your thesis is, “Don’t apply the principle of charity at all, use LCPW technique instead”. (As a bonus, steel manning your own beliefs means fixing your own epistemic errors.)
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by this, but the principle of charity entails not naively believing one’s first order guess of what one thinks the other person means and instead using motivated thinking in an attempt to somewhat counteract one’s biases such as one’s desire to win an argument. Fighting bias with bias is obviously problematic, but I wouldn’t describe it as trading away epistemic rationality.
As you said ”...importantly don’t need to assume that it’s what they really mean...it’s useful to keep separate mental buckets for these ideas, and very important to avoid conflating them.” The principle of charity is useful for reconstructing what was really meant, unlike LCPW, so each has an advantage over the other, and “improved” is not apt..
Agreed that LCPW is not directly useful this way. On the other hand, if what you want is correct understanding of a question, it doesn’t matter what anyone really thought originally, only what is the answer; or for arguments, not what were the original arguments, but what are the actually important considerations. There is a failure mode in disagreements where opponents start arguing about what they really meant, finding ground for the verbal fight unrelated to the original topic, preventing useful progress.
If taken as a counter-bias against tendency to assume a less reasonable position than should be expected, principle of charity can somewhat help, but then there are better third alternatives to this technique that don’t share its glaring anti-epistemic flaws. For example, you search harder for possible reasonable interpretations, to make sure they are available for consideration, but retain expected bad interpretations in the distribution of possible intended meanings.
Huh, I’d never realized the connection between PoC and LCPW before. I’ll have to think about that, although I wouldn’t necessarily say LCPW is a replacement for PoC. They solve different problems in practice—like lessdazed said, PoC can be more effective at countering overconfidence in knowing what you think your opponent meant, if that’s the goal. Would you mind giving an example though?
ETA:
I agree that if you’re going to use PoC, you shouldn’t apply it internally and unilaterally—if responding as though your opponent made a good argument requires some unlikely assumptions, you should still be well aware of that.