Below is a revised version of the entry on the Principle of Charity for the third edition of my book Thinking from A to Z.
Charity, Principle Of
Interpreting arguments or positions adopted by others in the best possible light. Rather than setting an opponent’s pronouncements up as an easy target, those who adopt the principle of charity look for the best case that this person could consistently be making rather than the worst. Adopting the principle of charity is the opposite of setting up a straw man. Rather than caricaturing an opponent’s position, charitable thinkers give everything about it the benefit of the doubt. The appropriateness of this depends entirely on the context.
Most everyday discussions are incomplete in many ways. Speakers omit key moves, or don’t make their underlying assumptions clear, for example. Consequently, many contributions to a discussion are open to interpretation. Those who adopt the principle of charity interpret, or at times reconstruct, another’s comments or ideas. There can be value in thinking about others’ challenges and arguments in their most plausible form. The process can be intellectually stimulating because it typically requires an act of creative imagination to recreate a strong argument from a series of assertions.
For example, in a debate about animal welfare, a speaker might state that all animals should be given equal rights. One response to this would be that that would be absurd, because it would be nonsensical, for example, to give giraffes the right to vote and own property since they would not understand either concept. A more charitable approach would be to interpret the claim ‘All animals should have equal rights’ as being a shorthand for ‘All animals should have equal rights of protection from harm’ and then to address that. Someone who adopted the principle of charity here would be forced to think through the strongest form of this argument rather than be satisfied with an easily refuted (see refutation) straw man. The process may result in a more stimulating discussion than if the speaker had simply refuted his or her opponent with a knock-down argument.
One problem with this approach, however is that it might simply be an intellectual exercise. There is no guarantee that your opponent would really want to defend the reconstructed argument, so the charitably interpreted argument may be the wrong argument to consider altogether if you are trying to engage with another person’s actual thought rather than an idealised version of it. And even when put in their strongest form, arguments may still be open to counterargument, or refutation.
There is no obligation to adopt a principle of charity, and in many cases it would be entirely inappropriate, labour-intensive, and unrewarding. But it can provide an occasional antidote to knocking down straw men, and the kind of relentless negativity that clear thinkers are sometimes accused of.
Prof. Warburton -- Any prediction as to when the third edition is due to become available? Thanks.
Posted by: jp | January 22, 2007 at 03:27 PM
I'm hoping the third edition of Thinking from A to Z will come out in June 2007...I'll post something about it on this weblog when it does.
Posted by: Nigel Warburton | January 22, 2007 at 07:08 PM
'There is no obligation to adopt a principle of charity'
That's good to know! I think a lot of people actually think there is. I am occasionally told (despite being the sweetest kindest person you'd want to avoid in a dark alley) that I disobeyed the principle of charity in disputing some claim or other. But there are times when what one is presented with is a claim that is woolly all the way down, and the task one sees before one is to say that the claim is thoroughly woolly. Resort to the principle of charity in such cases would seem to be a way to give woolly claims a free pass, and surely that can't be a good idea.
Posted by: Ophelia Benson | January 22, 2007 at 08:02 PM
I enjoyed the book "Thinking from A to Z" very much, especially its clarity. For me, the main problem with it is that I cannot really use it to *look up* some specific fallacy, when I need to, e.g. for preparation of a class. One can only browse in it. The reason is that many fallacies have several names among philosophers, and some have idiosyncratic names in the book. So, one doesn't know under what name to search for it in the book. In other words, the A to Z order is not really of any use, the order might as well be random. A possible solution to the problem might be an extensive index which would include all common designations. Sorry for my bad English.
Posted by: Ludwig Fahrbach | March 16, 2007 at 09:12 AM
A bit late for this edition I know but what about including material on cognitive bias? I agree completely that critical thinking is a vital skill but I think it's improved by an awareness of fallacies such as Forer effect. Perhaps just adding an entry for cognitive bias and then recommending a book such as Irrationality there would suffice?
Great book(s) by the way. I'm a big fan of you work and am an OU student myself - but on the Mathematics side though!
Posted by: PaulE | February 08, 2008 at 12:11 PM