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Single Idea 19154

[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity ]

Full Idea

The principle of charity says that it is unavoidable that the pattern of sentences to which a speaker assents reflects the semantics of the logical constants.

Gist of Idea

The principle of charity says an interpreter must assume the logical constants

Source

Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], 3)

Book Ref

Davidson,Donald: 'Truth and Predication' [Belknap Harvard 2005], p.62


A Reaction

That is not all the principle says, of course. Davidson seems to assume classical logic here, with a bivalent semantics. I wonder if all speakers use 'false' in the normal way, as well as 'true'? Do all languages even contain 'true'?


The 21 ideas with the same theme [assume people aim to speak truth]:

Common human behaviour enables us to interpret an unknown language [Wittgenstein]
To communicate, language needs agreement in judgment as well as definition [Wittgenstein]
Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine]
We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine]
The principle of charity only applies to the logical constants [Quine, by Miller,A]
We translate in a way that makes the largest possible number of statements true [Wilson,NL]
You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam]
Davidson's Cogito: 'I think, therefore I am generally right' [Davidson, by Button]
There is simply no alternative to the 'principle of charity' in interpreting what others do [Davidson]
The principle of charity attributes largely consistent logic and largely true beliefs to speakers [Davidson]
The principle of charity says an interpreter must assume the logical constants [Davidson]
We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs [Kim]
If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction [Kim]
Charity should minimize inexplicable error, rather than maximising true beliefs [Evans]
Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis]
A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth [Lewis]
We need natural properties in order to motivate the principle of charity [Lewis]
Charity makes native beliefs largely true, and Humanity makes them similar to ours [Dancy,J]
The principle of charity is holistic, saying we must hold most of someone's system of beliefs to be true [Miller,A]
Maybe we should interpret speakers as intelligible, rather than speaking truth [Miller,A]
Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady]