It’s slightly different in philosophy and in linguistics/conversational norms (as I understand). Conversationally, the principle of charity is to assume the kindest interpretation, in order not to derail the conversation. Philosophically, it’s to assume the strongest interpretation, in order to understand what claims about the world make sense.
In neither case would I recommend “popularity” as the basis for interpretation, except as a prior before you know anything about the topic or claimant.
The term was proposed by Wilson in the paper Substances without Substrata for a way to figure out what people actually mean. It’s a way to decide that the claim Caesar was a Roman dictator is supposed to refer to Julius Caesar and not some other individual named Caesar. In practice Philosophers do use the term to mean a variety of different things but the original definition was about that.
The concept Principle of Charity cames from linguistics and was created to speak about what people actually mean (which claims they make).
It’s slightly different in philosophy and in linguistics/conversational norms (as I understand). Conversationally, the principle of charity is to assume the kindest interpretation, in order not to derail the conversation. Philosophically, it’s to assume the strongest interpretation, in order to understand what claims about the world make sense.
In neither case would I recommend “popularity” as the basis for interpretation, except as a prior before you know anything about the topic or claimant.
The term was proposed by Wilson in the paper Substances without Substrata for a way to figure out what people actually mean. It’s a way to decide that the claim Caesar was a Roman dictator is supposed to refer to Julius Caesar and not some other individual named Caesar. In practice Philosophers do use the term to mean a variety of different things but the original definition was about that.