The Paradox of Charity
Informal Logic 32 (4):403-439 (2012)
Abstract
The principle of charity is used in philosophy of language and argumentation theory as an important principle of interpretation which credits speakers with “the best” plausible interpretation of their discourse. I contend that the argumentation account, while broadly advocated, misses the basic point of a dialectical conception which approaches argumentation as discussion between two parties who disagree over the issue discussed. Therefore, paradoxically, an analyst who is charitable to one discussion party easily becomes uncharitable to the other. To overcome this paradox, I suggest to significantly limit the application of the principle of charity depending on contextual factorsDOI
10.22329/il.v32i4.3620
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Citations of this work
Experimental ordinary language philosophy: a cross-linguistic study of defeasible default inferences.Eugen Fischer, Paul E. Engelhardt, Joachim Horvath & Hiroshi Ohtani - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):1029-1070.
Fooling the Victim: Of Straw Men and Those Who Fall for Them.Katharina Stevens - 2021 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 54 (2):109-127.
Denying antecedents and affirming consequents: The state of the art.David Godden & Frank Zenker - 2015 - Informal Logic 35 (1):88-134.
Wittgensteinian 'Therapy', Experimental Philosophy, and Metaphilosophical Naturalism.Eugen Fischer - 2018 - In Kevin Cahill & Thomas Raleigh (eds.), Wittgenstein and Naturalism. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 260-286.
References found in this work
Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature.Stephen C. Levinson - 2000 - MIT Press.
Commitment in Dialogue: Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning.Douglas Neil Walton & Erik C. W. Krabbe - 1995 - Albany, NY, USA: State University of New York Press.