The principle of charity is a counter-bias for one’s (estimated amount of) motivated cognition, underestimation of inferential distance, typical mind fallacy, etc. This is towards an accurate model of reality about the person one is speaking with.
It is superseded as a way to find truth about the subject in contention, rather than about the other person, by LCPW.
It is also a guide for responding, which doesn’t mean you have to believe anything in particular, just as one can always guess “red” for the color of the next card if most are red and some are blue. For the social utility of it, sure sometimes it’s not always useful, but always is pretty extreme. It’s not always useful to be honest, or to not fake a seizure in a debate either.
The principle of charity is a counter-bias for one’s (estimated amount of) motivated cognition, underestimation of inferential distance, typical mind fallacy, etc. This is towards an accurate model of reality about the person one is speaking with.
No, basically it just isn’t. The principle of charity as used here and in general is not “be charitable to the extent that unadorned Bayesian reasoning would tell you to anyway”. For most purposes applying charity to the extent that it seeks accuracy is utterly insufficient. Actually applying these principles consistently implies the use of motivated cognition to achieve perceived pragmatic goals.
No, basically it just isn’t. The principle of charity as used here and in general is not “be charitable to the extent that unadorned Bayesian reasoning would tell you to anyway”.
I have looked into the matter by reading articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, searching through google, reading journal articles by the originator and popularizers of the phrase etc. and I now know much more about this than I had.
I think a separate discussion post would be useful. When I wrote this, I was thinking of the PoC as something like an axiom that’s not explicitly built into logic, but is necessary for productive discussion because otherwise people would constantly nitpick or strawman each other, there would be no way to stop them, and so on. Based on the discussion here, though, it’s seeming more like a tool intended for social situations that’s usually suboptimal for truth-finding purposes, although again, it’s still better than always going with your initial interpretation or always going with the least logical interpretation.
The principle of charity is a counter-bias for one’s (estimated amount of) motivated cognition, underestimation of inferential distance, typical mind fallacy, etc. This is towards an accurate model of reality about the person one is speaking with.
It is superseded as a way to find truth about the subject in contention, rather than about the other person, by LCPW.
It is also a guide for responding, which doesn’t mean you have to believe anything in particular, just as one can always guess “red” for the color of the next card if most are red and some are blue. For the social utility of it, sure sometimes it’s not always useful, but always is pretty extreme. It’s not always useful to be honest, or to not fake a seizure in a debate either.
No, basically it just isn’t. The principle of charity as used here and in general is not “be charitable to the extent that unadorned Bayesian reasoning would tell you to anyway”. For most purposes applying charity to the extent that it seeks accuracy is utterly insufficient. Actually applying these principles consistently implies the use of motivated cognition to achieve perceived pragmatic goals.
I have looked into the matter by reading articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, searching through google, reading journal articles by the originator and popularizers of the phrase etc. and I now know much more about this than I had.
It is probably worth a separate discussion post.
If you are willing to put some detail in it would be worth a main post too.
I think a separate discussion post would be useful. When I wrote this, I was thinking of the PoC as something like an axiom that’s not explicitly built into logic, but is necessary for productive discussion because otherwise people would constantly nitpick or strawman each other, there would be no way to stop them, and so on. Based on the discussion here, though, it’s seeming more like a tool intended for social situations that’s usually suboptimal for truth-finding purposes, although again, it’s still better than always going with your initial interpretation or always going with the least logical interpretation.