Principle Of Charity: What It Is And What It Is For When Talking
Let’s imagine that in the middle of a conversation, someone is giving a wide variety of data (e.g., descriptive or biographical data about a person that could fit the description of two different people). Therefore, two different people come to mind, so we should accept as valid the option that makes the most sense based on the context of what it tells us.
The principle of charity requests that those statements made by another person be interpreted as rational and, in the event that there is a dialectical dispute, that the interpretation of the same that has greater solidity be taken into consideration, preventing irrational attributions, illogical fallacies or any falsehood are made about the statements of other people.
In this article We will see what the principle of charity consists of and what it is for.
In the fields of rhetoric and philosophy, the principle of charity requires that those statements made by an interlocutor be interpreted as rational and, In the event that there is a dialectical dispute, the interpretation of the dispute that is most solid should be taken into consideration
Therefore, if we stick to its strictest sense, the purpose of this principle would be to prevent irrational attributions, illogical fallacies or any falsehoods from being made about the statements of other people when in reality it would be possible for an interpretation to be made. rational and coherent of them.
To try to better understand this concept, let’s give an example: if another person presents us with an argument that could be interpreted in two ways, one of them being logical and the other fallacious, we should assume that the interpretation that we have interpreted as “logical” ” would then be the one that we will take into account as the one that that person really intended to transmit and not the other, as long as it is reasonable to do so.
In this way, putting the principle of charity into practice in various dialogues could be beneficial in a wide range of scenarios, since helps us foster dialogue that is appropriate, cordial, and discussions or debates that are productive at the same time that the argumentative capacity of the participants in these debates could be improved.
The origins of the principle of charity
The principle of charity was defined for the first time in the 1950s by Neil L. Wilson. For him, this new concept served to determine some referent of a proper name, so that this principle had been developed as a semantic rule
Let’s see an example of the principle of charity based on Wilson’s conception of this concept and that could be useful to students when preparing for an exam. To do this, we think of a name such as “Miguel” and then we choose a reference with that name to present 5 sentences about the life of someone who could be called Miguel and who is known to the people with whom we are carrying out the task ( It is usually carried out with illustrious people):
As we have seen, to use the principle of charity we have had to select a person to serve as a reference (‘designatum’) based on the choice of a proper name, which in this case will make a greater number of statements about the person true. name “Miguel”. Next, other people should think of illustrious individuals, whose main name is Miguel, and thus they could verify that the first 4 sentences refer to the writer Miguel de Unamuno, while the last sentence would refer to the writer Miguel de Cervantes.
Although this is only an example, since we could have taken other examples such as Miguel Ángel Buonarroti (artist), among others. Furthermore, this principle can be applied with any name (e.g., “Caesar,” in which case perhaps the most representative character could be the Emperor Julius Caesar of Ancient Rome).
These examples would demonstrate a simple use of the principle of charity, which is that when someone’s statements include a name that could potentially refer to various people, we should assume that it refers to the person who makes the most sense in the context of the statement.
Subsequently, The American philosophers Willard Can Orman Quine and Donald Davidson developed other different formulations to which Wilson had made about the principle of charity. Davidson talks about this principle as a tool that could help us try to understand what a speaker says when we are not sure of its meaning (principle of rational accommodation). Instead, Quine uses the principle of charity in a broader sense, giving it an empirical interpretation.
Later, several philosophers have made a formulation of at least 4 different versions of the principle of charity, so this principle could be used differently depending on the purpose of the conversation. These principles are the following:
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The benefits of putting the principle of charity into practice
Putting the principle of charity into practice could be a good resource as it is a possible mental shortcut when interpreting what other people are telling us, trying to find meaning in what we hear. Besides, This principle could help us be more understanding of other people since over time, if we choose to frequently use this principle we would be better trained to identify the best possible interpretation of what other people communicate to us, which is very important in the field of psychology.
On the other hand, the principle of charity can help people to improve your ability to construct your own arguments, so that they are more solid and coherent. This is because, in addition to being important to know how to detect and counteract all those illogical fallacies that other people tell us, it is also important not to focus only on that and for this we should try to develop our reasoning and argumentation skills. .
Furthermore, the principle of charity could improve the quality of our conversations and, therefore, our interpersonal relationships, since other people will prefer to talk to someone who is making a genuine effort to truly understand what other people are trying to tell them. say that talking to a person who is only focusing on identifying the problems or errors in what others say in order to counterattack their arguments and thus “win” the argument.
Lastly, it should be noted that the implementation of the principle of charity in our conversations encourages other people to be willing to listen to what we have to say. This is because people will be closer to us and more willing to have a conversation and listen to us because we tend to approach the best possible interpretation of their arguments. On the other hand, if we had focused on other less relevant aspects, those people would have less interest in talking to us and they would not listen to us openly when we wanted to tell them about something that we consider important.
In short, we could say that the principle of charity favors the development of conversations between two or more people with higher quality, thanks to a more open, coherent and profound interpretation, focused on what is really important for the parties involved. This principle rejects the search for counterarguments that are aimed at “victory” in a debate or dialectical dispute, nor does it focus on the argumentative errors of what other people say; However, what we seek here is to understand what other people say in the best possible way.
