Law & Society Blog

It is common practice in university departments to evaluate texts by way of “the principle of charity”. Some formulations of this principle make for fantastic additions to our analytical toolkit(s). Other formulations are mere distractions, and they waste our time.

It is misleading in the first place to speak of one single principle of charity, as there are many. But there is one common property that all those “charity principles” share. They tell us that, if you come to a point in a text where the surface meaning equivocates, then you may make a decision: you can either refrain from making an interpretation, or you can interpret charitably. By advising us to interpret charitably, they tell us to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and attribute to them the most defensible interpretation of their utterance on the basis of the evidence.

So, for instance, when then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said “I always treat other people’s money as if it were my own,” the most charitable reading would be to say that she meant something like, “I am careful with my own money, and in that sense I will be careful with the money of others”, and not, “ha-ha, I’ll spend all your money, taxpayers”. Or (more recently) when John Kerry made his joke about getting stuck in Iraq, he meant to speak against George W. Bush, not the troops. In cases where the author isn’t serious, is trying to be witty, or is attempting to illustrate a point by way of metaphor or other imperfect devices, then charity is well advised.

When the “charity” idea is well-formulated, it helps scholarship to the nth degree. A feast of fallacies in informal logic arise simply because the reader simply does not pay adequate attention to the words of a text, and interprets carelessly. For example, the “strawman” fallacy is the paradigmatic example of a failure of charity: the reader is so caught up in a desire to argue that they utterly misunderstand the position of their fellow conversant. Charity overrides this by telling us to listen carefully, and interpret in the strongest way.

One way to look at the relationship between charity and good scholarship, I think, is to examine the relationship between the law and virtuous conduct. In a society of the virtuous, there would be no need to have any laws. Similarly, in the society of good scholars, the principle of charity would never arise. For just as virtuous society would have no criminals, and thus no need for law, the society of good scholars would all listen to one another attentively, and thus not need to exercize charity.

But if “charity” is poorly formulated, then it actually hinders scholarship in a variety of monstrous and even anti-intellectual ways. (This trend applies to our analogy as well: a society which legislates virtue would be totalitarian.) So in the following, I’d like to quickly post two common errors associated with the careless application of ‘charity’ — errors that can be overcome by a robust understanding of what it means to exercise genuine charity in discussion.

If we are interested in achieving an adequate and serious understanding of charity, we cannot do better than to be guided by the careful work of Mark Vorobej in A Theory of Argument.

Error 1. Misunderstanding the basis of charity. Charity is not based on getting a more accurate reading of the text. The point of charity is not to understand the text more accurately. Quite the opposite: for the entire point behind our need for charity is that we’ve failed to establish an accurate interpretation that satisfies the level of lucidity we need. Rather, charity is grounded upon a sense of fairness in conversation. Vorobej explains: “To opt deliberately for any other reading [than the charitable reading] is unfair to the author, needlessly harsh and mean-spirited” (pp. 29).

This is important to recognize. If we confuse ourselves into thinking that charity is established on purely rational grounds, for instance as the cornerstone of all communication, then we end up having to abandon skepticism entirely in places where skepticism is most prudent. For instance, in some serious conversations, we simply must abandon charity altogether or else risk behaving imprudently.

The first rationale for rejecting charity is precisely because it would be unfair for the audience to be asked to make a charitable attribution in practice when the speaker has clearly spoken infelicitously. Say, for instance, that the Vice-President of the United States says, “The insurgency in Iraq is in its last throes”. Let’s also say that Iraq is undergoing a civil war which we can anticipate to be long-lasting. The most defensible interpretation of this would be to say that the meaning of “last” in the Vice-President’s utterance is used against the backdrop of some wider historical timescale; such that in (say) 30 years, the insurgency really would be gone and Iraq would be peaceful. Let’s also say that the alternate (non-charitable) interpretation of the utterance — namely, that the Vice President is simply confused about the state of Iraq — seems equally strong, as far as plausible attributions go; but we are told to attribute the more defensible interpretation, anyway.

But the “last throes” remark is not at all defensible as a way of phrasing the charitable interpretation. The words are at odds with the underlying meaning to such an extent that we simply must attribute the non-charitable interpretation to him. For, most of the time, utterances carry with them the idea that the speaker is saying things in a way that can be reasonably understood on the basis of what is said: a kind of automatic implication of felicity. To attribute the charitable intent to the speaker on the basis of some words used in context is to condone the method of phrasing (within some tolerances). To interpret charitably (without interjecting and saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa — what?”) is to accept that the underlying proposition clearly matches the manner of speaking. This is semanticide, and against part of the foundations of communication which any rational conversant must abide by.

The moral of the story is that, within some tolerances, felicity trumps charity.

Error 2. Ignoring the speaker’s goals. What does it mean to attribute to a person the “strongest” interpretation? We might say, wrongly, that it would be to grant them the interpretation that is closest to the truth. But obviously, this doesn’t make sense. To follow one famous Davidsonian line of thinking: if we grant that the meaning of a proposition is its truth-conditions, then the possibility of having false beliefs (and correcting false beliefs in others) forms a formidable basis for our grasping the meaning of propositions in the first place. In other words, you have to understand the utterance on the basis of what is most defensible in terms of the speaker’s beliefs, and not necessarily on the basis of what is true.

So it is far more important to take an examination of the speaker’s goals, personal projects, social situation, and so on, and then decide what would be the strongest interpretation from their point of view. So if someone from the Heaven’s Gate cult says, “Soon I will be over the moon!”, the strongest interpretation would not be to interpret them as meaning “Soon I’ll be happy”, which may be plausible as a matter of fact; but rather, we may go further and attribute to them the crazy belief that they will be, in fact, above the moon. Evaluation of truth need not apply.

This demand for verstehen applies just as well to practical-normative cases, where appeals to “truth” and “falsity” don’t enter the picture. If I go to the local park and see a sign that reads, “No motorized vehicles permitted”, am I supposed to infer that the judge or lawmaker who made the sign has banned those in motorized wheelchairs from the park? Of course not. The goal of the law which the lawmaker had in mind is easy to infer — namely, “Don’t park your car on city grass” — because we know the lawmakers are (supposed) to have public wellbeing in mind; and banning wheelchairs would be plainly working against that goal. If it were well-known that all lawmakers were a shifty bunch, and had a distaste for the handicapped and elderly, then we might make another interpretation.

There are consequences to accepting this wisdom. How many times have we heard this trope: “If we assume that Mr. Writer So-and-so was really smart; and that this interpretation of his words makes him seem really stupid; then we must interpret them as having meant something else”? All it takes to blow this bit of aphoristic pomp to shreds is to note that, in philosophy, one has to get used to seemingly ridiculous arguments which were made by really smart people. The fact of the matter is, people have different goals, different thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions. To assume that intelligence implies this-or-that interpretation is just silly, once we take into account the actual goals of the writer, and really come to accept that other intelligent persons may sometimes have wildly different beliefs than ourselves.

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