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Single Idea 3402
[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
]
Full Idea
If someone says "I do and I don't like x", we do not take her to be expressing a literally contradictory belief.
Gist of Idea
If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction
Source
Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.135)
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.135
A Reaction
It might mean 'one minute I like it, and the next minute I don't', where there seems to be a real contradiction, with a time factor. You can't sustain both preferences with conviction.
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
|
Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them
[Quine]
|
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6315
|
We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs
[Quine]
|
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7330
|
The principle of charity only applies to the logical constants
[Quine, by Miller,A]
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6316
|
We translate in a way that makes the largest possible number of statements true
[Wilson,NL]
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6275
|
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
|
Davidson's Cogito: 'I think, therefore I am generally right'
[Davidson, by Button]
|
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3971
|
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
|
The principle of charity says an interpreter must assume the logical constants
[Davidson]
|
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3403
|
We assume people believe the obvious logical consequences of their known beliefs
[Kim]
|
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3402
|
If someone says "I do and don't like x", we don't assume a contradiction
[Kim]
|
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9040
|
Charity should minimize inexplicable error, rather than maximising true beliefs
[Evans]
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15539
|
Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it
[Lewis]
|
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8614
|
A sophisticated principle of charity sometimes imputes error as well as truth
[Lewis]
|
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8615
|
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
|
Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it
[O'Grady]
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