Principle of Charity

The last two posts highlighted the two-edged problems associated with bias. On the one hand, bias is within us and all around us (in various forms) and we must always be careful to be aware of it, account for it and not succumb to it when analyzing information and making decisions. At the same time, dwelling on our own or other people’s biases can lead to endless navel gazing, paralysis and (most important for the issue being discussed on this blog) an argumentative dead end about the most important issues we should be discussing and debating.

Complex challenges such as this can often be mitigated through the application of a bit of “folk wisdom,” vs. ruthlessly logical proofs. And philosophy offers us something that can serve this role in the “Principle of Charity.”

This “Principle of Charity” requires participants in debate to extend certain “benefits of the doubt” to one another. One manifestation of this principle would be to consider and engage with the strongest interpretation of an opponent’s arguments. In a detailed discussion of this principle, the philosopher Nigel Warburton uses this example to illustrate the concept:

“… in a debate about animal welfare, a speaker might state that all animals should be given equal rights. One response to this would be that that would be absurd, because it would be nonsensical, for example, to give giraffes the right to vote and own property since they would not understand either concept. A more charitable approach would be to interpret the claim ‘All animals should have equal rights’ as being a shorthand for ‘All animals should have equal rights of protection from harm’ and then to address that.”

Of course, the Principle of Charity does not (and should not) be automatically applied to every argument and every debater. Assuming the best of a proponent of perpetual motion machines or conspiracy theories, for example, could lend legitimacy to arguments which are, on their face, simply bad or mendacious, requiring no further interpretation generous or otherwise. At the same time, much of our political debate could be made much calmer and more illuminating with a healthy dose of this Principle.

For example, if we were to apply the Principle of Charity to next year’s presidential contest, the first thing we would have to do would be to take the candidates at their word that their primary motivation for running for President is their love for America and their desire to contribute to improving it. While it is possible that one or both of next year’s Presidential candidates are Manchurian in nature, secretly planning to turn the country over to its enemies or transform us into a plutocracy, we are likely to get a better understanding of the candidates and the issues if we start with the charitable (and, likely, more accurate) position that the primary motivations for these candidates are positive.

This principle is similar to other concepts, such as Christ’s Golden Rule or Aristotle’s Golden Mean in preventing our own biases from overwhelming our judgment through a healthy application of balance and open mindedness.

To take one small example, we recently had a brief political dustup in my home state between the two likely candidates for Senator next year: one male, one female. In this instance, one of the candidates had posed for fashion photos in their youth which led the other candidate to joke that they “didn’t need to take [their] cloths off to get through college,” to which the other candidate replied “Thank God.”

Now this could have been interpreted as light political banter between rivals (hardly Churchillian in its wit, but still humorous). But instead it became the subject of accusation and counter-accusation of sexism vs. snobbery. And if you knew which candidate belonged to which gender and party, you can pretty much guess on which side most partisans landed in this debate.

But what if you didn’t know who was who? If you find yourself withholding your outrage until you find out which party each quipper belonged to, more than likely this is not a genuine issue but rather a matter of political theatrics which provides little insight into anything other than our own biases. How much simpler to just apply the Principle of Charity and assume this exchange to be nothing more than some light hearted back-and-forthing between rivals that pretty much means nothing, then moving onto matters more worthy of discussion and debate.

In addition to the benefits this principle brings to prioritization (a key requirement for critical thinking), it also has an emotional upside. For unlike the partisan thinker who spends an entire election cycle in a perpetual rage against the behavior of their political foes, those that subscribe to the Principle of Charity can ride out an election cycle feeling pretty good about themselves and their country, even as they grapple with the difficult matter of how to make it better.