Principle of Charity

« In courses on critical thinking (or argument analysis or informal logic), students learn a method for interpreting and evaluating the arguments and assertions that they read and hear.

The principle of charity often plays a central role in the methodology taught in such courses.

The version of the principle advanced in this context is typically one of the weaker ones mentioned above, recommending that charitable interpretations be favoured, but acknowledging other considerations as well.

Advocates of charity differ over the basis for the principle.

Some see it as an ethical matter.

On this view, being charitable is part of being fair to those with whom one interacts.

An alternative view emphasizes a more epistemological and pragmatic basis for being charitable: being charitable best contributes to one's own pursuit of the truth.

Interpreting others in ways that make their words less plausible may make it easy to refute them.

But interpreting and reflecting on the most plausible interpretation of their words is apt to increase the interpreter's own understanding of the issues addressed.

When there is a more plausible and more insightful interpretation available, there is little point in considering a less plausible interpretation of the assertions or arguments of others. 3 Charity and philosophy of mind Something resembling the principle of charity plays a key role in Daniel Dennett 's influential philosophy of mind. According to Dennett , when we describe a thing as an intentional system (a thing with propositional attitudes), we must take it to be rational.

Dennett's claim is not endorsing any of the weaker theses described above.

Rather, his claim is about the possibility of explaining or characterizing irrationality in intentional terms.

He says of a purported case of irrationality, 'we must descend from the level of beliefs and desires to some other level of theory to describe' the case, since such cases 'defy description in ordinary terms of belief and desire' (Dennett 1982: 66-7).

The claim here is not that we are always rational, but just that we cannot give intentional explanations of seemingly irrational behaviour.

On Dennett 's view, charity is not just a pragmatic, moral or epistemic principle to help guide interpretation.

It is an essential part of intentional interpretation.

Dennett argues for this partly by appeal to general considerations about belief and other intentional states, partly by appeal to the difficulty he finds in filling out the details of intentional explanations in cases of alleged irrationality. 4 Charity, philosophy of language and epistemology The most widely explored use of the principle of charity is in discussions of radical translation.

W.V.

Quine and Donald Davidson are the most influential defenders of the principle in this setting.

Quine discusses cases of radical translation - translation in cases in which the words to be translated are those of people in a foreign and unfamiliar culture.

He contends that if we come up with a translation scheme that renders their beliefs and utterances regularly silly or mistaken, we will eventually be driven to question our translation scheme and replace it by one that makes more sense of them.

Thus, if a person utters a certain sentence when and only when a rabbit passes by, one is to interpret that sentence to mean something like the true 'That's a rabbit' , rather than the false 'That's a. »