The Principle of Charity [View all]

[Silent3]

I'm not talking about contributing your local soup kitchen or Doctors Without Borders. I'm talking about how people conduct an argument.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity:

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.[1] In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies, or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available. According to Simon Blackburn, "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings."

As much as I love DU, sadly this principle is too often lacking when disagreements crop up here.

A good example recently (although not one of the more active, contentious threads), had the subject, "I don't watch the news and I vote".

For all the people who took a moment to read the thread and make sense of what the poster was talking about, the topic was clearly about people who vote even though they aren't paying much attention to the news IN ANY FORMAT.

NOT just about TV news.

Applying the Principle of Charity no one would or should snap back angrily about how they literally don't watch the news, because they're reading the news or listening to it.

Other subjects get a lot testier. God forbid, for example, someone use wording (say "illegal immigrant" instead of "undocumented alien" ) that some DUers associate with the right wing and right wing talking points.

Some people are either just looking for a fight, or have decided they are the Fierce Guardians of DU, vigilantly patrolling the perimeter on the lookout for trolls and nefarious propagandists trying to sneak in.

Rather than applying the Principle of Charity, the apparent top priority among the Guardians is fast, snap identification of the enemy. These people respond to posts that set off their overly-sensitive danger indicators with utter self-assuredness that they've got one. Once that snap judgment has been made, there's no escape from it. The Guardians will interpret any attempt to defend or explain the offending post as the imagined offender merely trying to "squirm out of it".

While, of course, most DUers aren't like that, there certainly aren't many who will jump in and help try to defend someone who has been subjected to summary judgment -- most others on the sidelines just want to stay out of these feeding frenzies, even if they don't agree with what's being done.

PS: Applying the The Principle of Charity myself, I realize some people responding to the "I don't watch the news and I vote" thread were merely clarifying their own news consumption habits, and did understand the real meaning of the thread. Some, but not all.