The principle of charity
from 1959 Named by N. L. Wilson; developed by Quine and Davidson
Read the argument in the strongest version its words will bear, then answer that — because defeating a weaker version proves nothing.
- Active
- from 1959
- Where
- North America
- Status
- In use
- Tradition
- Devices and constraints
What it is
The principle of charity requires interpreting what someone said in the way that makes it most reasonable. Where an utterance admits several readings, take the one on which the speaker is making the best case, not the one easiest to refute.
In Quine and Davidson it is stronger than a courtesy — it is a condition of interpretation at all. Attributing massive error to someone is self-defeating, since if you think most of what they say is false you have no grounds for thinking you have understood any of it.
How it works
Identify the readings the words will bear. Discard the ones that make the speaker obviously foolish, unless nothing else fits. Where a gap or an error appears, ask whether repairing it produces something the speaker plausibly meant. Answer that version. Say which version you are answering.
The last step matters, because a charitable reading that is not identified as one can look like putting words in someone's mouth.
How it is applied
- The utterance admits more than one reading
- One reading makes the speaker's case stronger than the others
- Nothing in the context rules that reading out
- Therefore answer that reading, and state which reading is being answered
The device applied
Proposition The objection is about drainage, not about the colour of the roof.
- The submission reads, in full: this development will ruin the street and the roof is the wrong colour and there will be water everywhere like at number 12.
- Read literally, it is an aesthetic objection with a complaint about roof colour, which the planning instrument does not make a relevant consideration and which can be dismissed in a line.
- But the readings the words bear include another: that the objector is pointing at a drainage consequence and has led with what they can see rather than what they mean.
- Nothing rules that out. Number 12 is on the same fall, was approved in 2021, and has a recorded stormwater complaint — which the objector, as a neighbour, would know and the assessing officer would not unless they looked.
- On the stronger reading the objection is that the stormwater assessment repeats the assumptions that failed at number 12. That is a relevant consideration, and it is a good point.
Therefore Answer the drainage objection, and record that this is how the submission has been read — because dismissing a valid drainage point on the ground that it was expressed as a complaint about roof colour would be a failure of assessment, not a win.
The charitable reading was also the correct one, and it was available from a fact the objector had and the officer did not. That is the usual case: the weak reading is usually weak because the reader is missing something.
What it is good for
Submissions, complaints, and any argument made by someone without the vocabulary of the forum they are addressing. It is also the only way to know whether you have actually defeated a position.
Where it fails
It can be taken past the point where it is interpretation. Repairing an argument until it is one you find plausible produces your argument, not theirs, and answering it establishes nothing about what the person actually said. Where the charitable version is unrecognisable to its author, charity has become substitution.
And it is not always owed. An argument made in bad faith, or one whose weakness is the point, is not improved by being strengthened, and the strengthened version can lend credibility to something that had none.
The Davidsonian version has a further problem: if we must interpret others as mostly right, it becomes hard to account for the deep and systematic errors people demonstrably do hold.
Common misconceptions
That it means being nice, or conceding ground. It is a rule about what you are obliged to defeat, and it makes refutation harder rather than easier.
Where it came from
Named by N. L. Wilson in 1959, developed by Quine in Word and Object as a constraint on radical translation, and made central by Davidson as a condition of interpretation itself.
What became of it
Standard in philosophy of language as a theoretical constraint, and widely adopted in ordinary argumentative practice under the name steel-manning.
Lasting influence
It underpins the whole Davidsonian programme in interpretation, and it is the norm that distinguishes serious argument from point-scoring.
Why it still matters
Very high, and the norm most often invoked and least often practised.
Put another way
Fighting the opponent at their weight rather than the one you wish they were.
Texts
Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
The essays on radical interpretation, where charity is a condition of understanding rather than an ethical requirement.
Where to start
Take the last argument you dismissed and write the strongest version of it. Then see whether your reply still works.
The surprising bit
A principle formulated to solve a technical problem about translating an unknown language has become the standard rule of good faith in public argument.
In their own words
Charity is forced on us; whether we like it or not, if we want to understand others, we must count them right in most matters
Who held it
N. L. Wilson
Connections
- Parallel to
- Pūrvapakṣa and siddhānta
The verdict
The precondition of any refutation worth having, and easily pushed until it stops being interpretation.