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Single Idea 18703
[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
]
Full Idea
Davidson's Cogito has the form 'I think, therefore I am generally right'.
Gist of Idea
Davidson's Cogito: 'I think, therefore I am generally right'
Source
report of Donald Davidson (Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge [1983], 16.6) by Tim Button - The Limits of Reason
Book Ref
Button,Tim: 'The Limits of Realism' [OUP 2013], p.171
A Reaction
On the whole I would subscribe to this Cogito (as Button calls it), from an evolutionary perspective. There would just be no point in thought if it wasn't generally right in everyday activity.
The
21 ideas
with the same theme
[assume people aim to speak truth]:
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4144
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Common human behaviour enables us to interpret an unknown language
[Wittgenstein]
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11049
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To communicate, language needs agreement in judgment as well as definition
[Wittgenstein]
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6314
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Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them
[Quine]
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6315
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We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs
[Quine]
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7330
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The principle of charity only applies to the logical constants
[Quine, by Miller,A]
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6316
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We translate in a way that makes the largest possible number of statements true
[Wilson,NL]
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6275
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You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs
[Putnam]
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18703
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Davidson's Cogito: 'I think, therefore I am generally right'
[Davidson, by Button]
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3971
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There is simply no alternative to the 'principle of charity' in interpreting what others do
[Davidson]
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8869
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The principle of charity attributes largely consistent logic and largely true beliefs to speakers
[Davidson]
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19154
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The principle of charity says an interpreter must assume the logical constants
[Davidson]
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3403
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We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs
[Kim]
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3402
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If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction
[Kim]
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9040
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Charity should minimize inexplicable error, rather than maximising true beliefs
[Evans]
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15539
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Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it
[Lewis]
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8614
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A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth
[Lewis]
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8615
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We need natural properties in order to motivate the principle of charity
[Lewis]
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2762
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Charity makes native beliefs largely true, and Humanity makes them similar to ours
[Dancy,J]
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7328
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The principle of charity is holistic, saying we must hold most of someone's system of beliefs to be true
[Miller,A]
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7329
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Maybe we should interpret speakers as intelligible, rather than speaking truth
[Miller,A]
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4734
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Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it
[O'Grady]
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