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Skepticism "Refuted" via the Principle of Charity

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Skepticism "Refuted" via the Principle of Charity
Dunamis
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Posted 05/24/08 - 05:51 PM:
Subject: Skepticism "Refuted" via the Principle of Charity 		quote post
#1
Randy Helzerman rather adroitly (less than 10 minutes) explains and uses the Principle of Charity to defeat the sense of global skepticism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6d2dR_xf70

It helps on understanding why Davidson believed what he believed, why he argued what he argued.






Edited by Dunamis on 05/24/08 - 07:23 PM
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar
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Posted 05/25/08 - 02:54 AM:
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#2
Thanks for that; very clear.

And here in a curious bit of synchronicity, is unenlightened trying to apply the principle without even being aware of its existence. (with some difficulty and small success)

edit: In making a necessity of virtue, he seems almost to have derived an ought from an is!shocked
...most of our actions are the result of the past, or according to a future ideal. That's not action, that is just conformity. J Krishnamurti

"Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys
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Posted 05/25/08 - 07:13 AM:
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The principle of charity is an attitude, a certain posture. It involves and conveys tentative respect for our interlocutors and their ideas. Especially in conversation and forum exchanges, it can short-circuit many unnecessary misunderstandings and hostilities.

When we suspect that a claim is problematic, instead of jumping to a judgment that the logic is fallacious or that the evidence is compromised or that our interlocutor is an irrational ideologue and the like, we do well first to bracket our suspicions and then simply to ask for clarification.

If we don’t do this and instead we've misconstrued what it is that our interlocutor actually means, then all we've managed to debate is our own strawman misrepresentation, which is pointless, sophomoric and dysfunctional to our purpose of understanding someone else's claims. Instead of leaping to a judgment that our interlocutor is irrational or factually wrong, we can simply address the specifics of what we suspect the logical or empirical problem to be. We can say, "Yes, I agree that there's a green square on the table. But you didn't mention the blue circle. Do you agree also that there's a blue circle?" Or when our interlocutor says, “There’s something blue on the spoon” instead of leaping to the judgment that he is wrong or delusional or deliberately misrepresenting the situation, all we need do is investigate his use of the term “spoon” to see if it was an incidental slip, or if it’s a misunderstanding on his part of what the conventional meaning of the word spoon is, or if he’s using a metaphor or a specially stipulated sense of the word. etc.

It’s standard operating procedure in everyday language exchanges with others for us to do a lot of guessing and filling in the blanks and assuming and constructing meaning from the context and tone and body language and previous experience with this particular person or topic about what was meant. We get an amazing amount of it right—but we get a lot wrong, and this should give us pause. Much of the time all ti takes is asking for clarification so we can better understand what was actually meant.

Not abiding by the principle of charity is not only dysfunctional to our purpose of understanding another’s claims, it also reveals that perhaps our purpose is not really to understand another’s claims, but rather is to make ourselves appear to be superior to them in some sense (by characterizing them as ignorant or foolish or irrational or delusional or emotional, etc.) Ornot to use the principle of charity may be a way of avoiding argument that is incompatioble with our own particular agendas. I have the impression that the degree to which someone practices the principle of charity correlates with intellectual honesty and maturity.

On the other hand, once we have clearly understood what it is that someone is saying, then it’s open season on analyzing their reasoning or lack thereof.



Cheers.
jd


Edited by jdrw on 05/25/08 - 07:19 AM
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.
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Posted 05/25/08 - 01:16 PM:
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unenlightened wrote:


edit: In making a necessity of virtue, he seems almost to have derived an ought from an is!shocked


Yes. That is the interesting thing about Davidson's view. The is/ought chasm which supposedly never is able to be crossed, collapses. The reason is, prescription (normatives) precedes description (what "is"). Without the community of minds, organized by normatives of behavior, there is no "is" to be taken as objective knowledge.




Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar
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Posted 05/25/08 - 01:54 PM:
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Dunamis wrote:

Yes. That is the interesting thing about Davidson's view. The is/ought chasm which supposedly never is able to be crossed, collapses. The reason is, prescription (normatives) precedes description (what "is"). Without the community of minds, organized by normatives of behavior, there is no "is" to be taken as objective knowledge.


But the is/ought divide is not an issue of dividing what is from prescriptive norms for determining what is, it's one of dividing what is from some sort of allegedly transcendent, universally binding prescriptions for behavior in interactions between and among people, transcendent, universally binding prescriptions about how to treat one another.

By adhering to the prevailing norms about what is wanted and what is of interest and of what purposes are addressed (as well as adhering to the prevailing norms regarding epistemic criteria) there's a sense in which we can get an is from an ought. But the is/ought issue is one of getting an ought from an is--a transcendent, universally binding ought, at that.



Cheers.
jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.
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Posted 05/25/08 - 02:33 PM:
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jdrw wrote:

But the is/ought divide is not an issue of dividing what is from prescriptive norms for determining what is, it's one of dividing what is from some sort of allegedly transcendent, universally binding prescriptions for behavior in interactions between and among people, transcendent, universally binding prescriptions about how to treat one another.


This is the way that Hume puts his propositional objection, in his A Treatise on Human Nature:

when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not,that expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.


While the aim may be the transcendent binding, the OBJECTION is a change in kind of proposition, a moving from "is" or "is not" to "ought to" or "ought not". It is towards this objection that Davidson's view upends, the shift from one kind (presumed to be more essential) to another kind. Instead, it is the prescription which precedes the description, that is, the very capacity to say "is" or "is not".

By adhering to the prevailing norms about what is wanted and what is of interest and of what purposes are addressed (as well as adhering to the prevailing norms regarding epistemic criteria) there's a sense in which we can get an is from an ought. But the is/ought issue is one of getting an ought from an is--a transcendent, universally binding ought, at that.


Because the objection is based ont he shift in kind, "Hume's Guillotine", the very transcendence is not the aspect attacked. Generally, come from the nature of Hume's criticism, it is taken to be the problem from moving from what is assumed to be primary (our agreement about the "is" and the "is not" of things in the world: Realism), to what is often assumed to be derivative somehow, the "oughts" of ethics and morals. Instead, when the prescriptives are seen to precede and condition the otherwise assumed to be more primary "is", the problem of moving from one to the other is no longer a shift in kind. There are still shifts, but they no longer are so categorically distinct. Descriptions are prescriptions as well, they entail normatives.

Just my opinion.
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar
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Posted 05/25/08 - 05:13 PM:
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Dunamis wrote:

Because the objection is based ont he shift in kind, "Hume's Guillotine", the very transcendence is not the aspect attacked. Generally, come from the nature of Hume's criticism, it is taken to be the problem from moving from what is assumed to be primary (our agreement about the "is" and the "is not" of things in the world: Realism), to what is often assumed to be derivative somehow, the "oughts" of ethics and morals. Instead, when the prescriptives are seen to precede and condition the otherwise assumed to be more primary "is", the problem of moving from one to the other is no longer a shift in kind. There are still shifts, but they no longer are so categorically distinct. Descriptions are prescriptions as well, they entail normatives.

Just my opinion.

I think that the issue of the is/ought divide hinges centrally on the direction: from an is to an ought. And I don't understand Davidson as having crossed the divide in this direction.


Cheers.
jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.
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Posted 05/25/08 - 07:20 PM:
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jdrw wrote:

I think that the issue of the is/ought divide hinges centrally on the direction: from an is to an ought. And I don't understand Davidson as having crossed the divide in this direction.

jd


Of course, the OBJECTION is an objection of direction, (which, as I already pointed out) is based on an implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption that "is" is primary, and "ought" is somehow derivative or secondary. The very framework of this objection is what Davidson overturns. The objection simply does not pertain.

Secondly, so many of the theologically based arguments for morality are not "is's" in the sense of "that is an apple". They are "is's" of cohension. They are much more of the loose order, "There is cohension...therefore one ought to cohere". In Davidson this finds the more modest form of "There is a Principle of Charity...One ought to follow the Principle of Charity." Taken as a peformative constraint of sense, and interpretation, something we already do.

One does not, as a language speaker, start with an "is" and then only graduate through some mysterious process to a secondary (and more more relative) "ought". "IS" already is a prescriptive. There is no DIRECTION. Davidson, in a regard, helps collapse the distinction on which the criticism is based.


Edited by Dunamis on 05/25/08 - 07:51 PM
Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar
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Posted 05/26/08 - 12:28 AM:
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Or as the God squad puts it, creation and judgement go together.

I don't know if this happens to others, but occasionally the results of my charity, become assailed by skepticism anew. I think I am understanding the conversation, and then someone says something like "Oh, Hume was a second-rate prime-minister anyway." and suddenly the principle of charity towards my own understanding is suspended in a fog of skeptical confusion. Were we talking about the same thing? In other words, my charity is not an irrevocable gift, more like an overdraft facility, that is subject to instant recall when the meaning credit-crunch bites.
...most of our actions are the result of the past, or according to a future ideal. That's not action, that is just conformity. J Krishnamurti

"Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys
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Posted 05/26/08 - 06:57 AM:
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Dunamis wrote:

Of course, the OBJECTION is an objection of direction, (which, as I already pointed out) is based on an implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption that "is" is primary, and "ought" is somehow derivative or secondary. The very framework of this objection is what Davidson overturns. The objection simply does not pertain.


My understanding of the whole point of Hume's is/ought issue is rather that ought is not possibly derived from of any is. Neither are oughts construed as secondary, rather. they’re explicitly characterized as a different category of claims from is claims.



Secondly, so many of the theologically based arguments for morality are not "is's" in the sense of "that is an apple". They are "is's" of cohension. They are much more of the loose order, "There is cohension...therefore one ought to cohere".


I don’t understand what you mean. And I cannot see the connection with Hume's is/ought issue.



In Davidson this finds the more modest form of "There is a Principle of Charity...One ought to follow the Principle of Charity." Taken as a peformative constraint of sense, and interpretation, something we already do.


The principle of charity strikes me simply as some wise advice about how to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. It is not a moral prescription, it is a pragmatic guideline that increases our ability to achieve our purposes. It is a different kind of ought altogether from the allegedly transcendent, universally binding moral oughts of the is/ought issue.



One does not, as a language speaker, start with an "is" and then only graduate through some mysterious process to a secondary (and more more relative) "ought". "IS" already is a prescriptive. There is no DIRECTION. Davidson, in a regard, helps collapse the distinction on which the criticism is based.

I agree that there’s a sense in which is is prescriptive, but it is not the same sense as the oughts of Hume’s is/ought divide. The oughts in the is/ought divide are understood to refer to some sort of distinctly moral aspect, some sort of distinctly moral dimension. These oughts are used to express moral duty, or moral obligation, or moral rightness, and the like. And these moral prescriptives can be conceived of as a separate category of claims from is claims.

The is/ought issue is a claim that morality as generally understood (transcendent, universally binding, etc.) is decidedly not derived from descriptions of our interactions with the world. And therefore that the truth of moral ought claims is not founded in observations of the world.

The value judgments and conventions and norms that are inextricably involved in our constructions of descriptive is conceptualizations and statements a la Davidson simply are not the moral oughts of Hume’s is/ought issue. Davidson’s construal of our descriptions of the world contrasts with a naïve realist construal, but not only doesn’t it “collapse” Hume’s is/ought distinction, I don’t think it even addresses Hume's is/ought issue.



Cheers.
jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.
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