I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not a big fan of the principle of charity—often defined as the rule that you should interpret other people’s arguments on the assumption that they are not saying anything stupid.
As far as I understand, the Principle of Charity is defined differently; it states that you should interpret other people’s arguments on the assumption that these people are arguing in good faith. That is to say, you should assume that your interlocutor honestly believes in everything he’s saying, and that he has no ulterior motive beyound getting his point across. He may be entirely ignorant, stupid, or both; but he’s not a liar or a troll.
This principle allows all parties to focus on the argument, and to stick to the topic at hand -- as opposed to spiraling into the endless rabbit-holes of psychoanalyzing each other.
Wikipedia quotes a few philosophers on the principle of charity:
Blackburn: “it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject’s sayings.”
Davidson: “We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement.”
Also, Dennett in The Intentional Stance quotes Quine that “assertions startlingly false on the face of them are likely to turn on hidden differences of language”, which seems to be a related point.
Irrespective of how you define the principle of charity (i.e. motivation based or intelligence based), I do believe that the principle on the whole should not become a universal guideline and it is important to distinguish it, a sort of “principle of differential charity”. This is obviously similar to basic real world things (eg. expertise when it comes to the intelligent charity issue and/or political/official positioning when it comes to the motivation issue).
I also realise that being differentially charitable may come with the risk of becoming even more biased, if you’re priors themselves are based on extremely biased findings. However, I would think that by and large it works well, and is a great time saver when deciding how much effort to put into evaluating claims and statements alike.
As far as I understand, the Principle of Charity is defined differently; it states that you should interpret other people’s arguments on the assumption that these people are arguing in good faith. That is to say, you should assume that your interlocutor honestly believes in everything he’s saying, and that he has no ulterior motive beyound getting his point across. He may be entirely ignorant, stupid, or both; but he’s not a liar or a troll.
This principle allows all parties to focus on the argument, and to stick to the topic at hand -- as opposed to spiraling into the endless rabbit-holes of psychoanalyzing each other.
Wikipedia quotes a few philosophers on the principle of charity:
Blackburn: “it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject’s sayings.”
Davidson: “We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement.”
Also, Dennett in The Intentional Stance quotes Quine that “assertions startlingly false on the face of them are likely to turn on hidden differences of language”, which seems to be a related point.
Interesting point of distinction.
Irrespective of how you define the principle of charity (i.e. motivation based or intelligence based), I do believe that the principle on the whole should not become a universal guideline and it is important to distinguish it, a sort of “principle of differential charity”. This is obviously similar to basic real world things (eg. expertise when it comes to the intelligent charity issue and/or political/official positioning when it comes to the motivation issue).
I also realise that being differentially charitable may come with the risk of becoming even more biased, if you’re priors themselves are based on extremely biased findings. However, I would think that by and large it works well, and is a great time saver when deciding how much effort to put into evaluating claims and statements alike.