The Principle of Charity
Sometimes when you are faced with an argument, you can see immediately what it means and what the arguer’s intentions are, but sometimes not. Often you have to do a bit of interpretation.
For example, sometimes one or more premises in an argument are left unstated. This doesn’t necessarily mean the argument is a bad one – it may be that when you spell out the implicit premises, they are so obviously true that there is no problem. That is in fact one reason why you might leave premises unstated – they’re so obvious that they don’t seem worth mentioning.
The problematic case is when the unstated premises are implausible. Sometimes sneaky arguers deliberately leave crucial premises unstated because those premises are completely implausible, and hope that the people they are trying to persuade don’t notice that the argument relies on an implausible unstated premise.
Sometimes even the conclusion of an argument is not explicitly stated. In advertising, for example, the conclusion tends to be “You should buy this product,” but often that’s not explicitly said – you’re told the reasons why you should buy it (the premises) but left to figure out the conclusion from the context. Likewise in politics. In an election year you hear many arguments whose conclusion, not always explicitly stated, is “You should vote for me!”
Issues of fair dealing arise both when you’re trying to persuade someone by giving an argument (you should avoid sneakily leaving controversial premises unstated) and when you’re evaluating someone else’s argument (if the argument is not completely stated or not completely clear, you should be charitable in your reconstruction of it).
Here’s an example of an argument which relies on an unstated premise or assumption. See if you can figure out what premise needs to be added to get from the premises of this argument to the conclusion. Hint: it’s a premise that’s so obviously true that you might have trouble even noticing its absence.
In the “microwave dinners” example, the unstated premise is one that we would probably all accept.
But consider this argument:
Murder is the killing of an innocent human being. So abortion is murder, because abortion is the killing of a foetus, and you can’t get much more innocent than a foetus.
This also has an unstated premise: it relies on, but does not explicitly state, the premise: Foetuses are human beings.
In this case the omission may be less benign. The unstated premise is controversial, and the arguer may be hoping that if they don’t state it, their opponent won’t notice that the argument relies on it.
When you are reconstructing an incomplete argument, you should apply the principle of charity: where you have a choice about how to reconstruct the argument, you should reconstruct it in such a way as to make it the best argument it can be. That is, if you can, you should reconstruct it as an argument with plausible premises and a strong connection between premises and conclusion.
Here’s an example. Consider this incomplete argument:
Abortion is deliberately killing an innocent human being, so obviously it’s morally wrong.
There are a number of different premises you could add to get from the premise “Abortion is deliberately killing an innocent human being” to the conclusion “Abortion is morally wrong.” In cases like this in which you have a choice, how do you decide what premise to add?
You should:
a) Use whatever evidence you can get about the arguer’s intentions from the stated premises, conclusion and context.
b) Apply the Principle of Charity. This principle says that when faced with an argument which needs reconstructing or augmenting, you should reconstruct it in as as charitable a way as possible. If you can avoid it, you shouldn’t add premises that are obviously false – you should add the most plausible premise that will do the job. And you should add premises which help to link the stated premises to the conclusion.
Why be so nice?
Well, if you’re in a debate with someone and you attack a version of their argument which isn’t as strong as it could be, be, the person will just say: “That wasn’t what I meant. You’re not attacking my actual argument, you’re caricaturing my argument.” So you won’t have got anywhere.
Consider the example above. Someone says to you: “Abortion is deliberately killing an innocent human being, so obviously it’s morally wrong.”
There’s a premise missing – something that connects the killing with the wrongness – and there are a number of different premises that would do the job.
- Killing is morally wrong. (No – many people think it’s okay to kill animals for food, and almost everyone thinks it’s okay to kill plants for food.) So let’s try:
- Killing humans is morally wrong. (No – we think it’s okay to kill in self-defense.) So let’s try:
- Killing innocent humans is morally wrong. (No- it’s not morally wrong to kill someone by unavoidable accident. If a kid runs out in front of my car and I hit them because I couldn’t stop in time despite my best efforts, that’s extremely regrettable, but it doesn’t seem as though I did something morally wrong.) So let’s try:
- Deliberately killing innocent humans is morally wrong.
If you reconstruct your opponent’s argument by adding 1 above, and then attack 1, the person will brush you off by denying that 1 was what they intended to say. It’s tempting to do this, because it’s much easier to find counterexamples to 1 or 2 than to 4. But you won’t win the argument that way, unless your opponent is half asleep. If you attribute to them the more plausible unstated premise 4, which is probably what they intended, then you can have a productive debate about the issue and your opponent won’t be able to side-step your objections in the same way. Is 4 true? Is it true that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being? Having reconstructed the argument in the most charitable way you can, it’s now possible to evaluate it – to consider whether the premises are true, and whether, if true, they provide good reasons to believe the conclusion.
