Jon, The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author are true. Its only requirement is to assume that other participants in the discussion are rational human beings who are making meaningful statements, which they have some reason to believe are true. But charity does not require the listener to agree that they are true. Note the passage you quoted: Wikipedia> 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. 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." I have never claimed that any of your statements were meaningless or irrational. What I criticized was the strength and methods of the argument. For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote.JAS> We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We (apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing exactly that.I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce. But I did criticize your method of stringing together multiple quotations from different contexts. I did not claim that was irrational. But I did say that the some of the critical quotations were taken out of contexts where charity toward Peirce would give them a different interpretation.JAS> On the contrary, Gary R. is consistently an exemplary model of the "generosity of attitude" that he advocates as List moderator.No. A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are inappropriate.But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to interpret Peirce without stating a single example where my statement was wrong or inappropriate. He also made a blanket statement that your arguments were superior to mine. On several occasions, he said that he agreed with you and not with me. But he never explained why any particular point I made was wrong.I never complained about anybody who might disagree with me for one reason or another. But Gary R stepped way out of bounds when he made a blanket condemnation of my writings without ever showing a single example that was inappropriate.JAS> Peirce's distaste for "metaphysicians" was prompted by their dogmatism...I checked CP for every occurrence of 'metaphysician'. There are 71 occurrences. I did not check every one of them. But in the great majority of the ones I checked, his complaint was about their methods of reasoning. The first occurrence is typical: "The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine." (CP 1.7)In the second quotation (CP 1.29), he praised two of them because of their methods of reasoning: "These two men, Duns Scotus and William Ockham, are decidedly the greatest speculative minds of the middle ages, as well as two of the profoundest metaphysicians that ever lived."Methods of reasoning were one of Peirce's strongest interests from childhood to the end. In his criticisms of philosophers, his strongest praise and condemnation were about their reasoning. I won't claim that I am as good as Peirce in this respect. But I do admire and try to emulate his way of adapting the methods of reasoning in logic and mathematics to every subject he discussed.I won't claim that everybody must apply formal logic and mathematics to everything. In fact, Peirce himself had a high regard for vagueness. (249 instances of 'vague' in CP, with or without some ending.) In some cases, he criticized vagueness. But more often than not, he recognized that a vague statement was appropriate in the context. In fact, his pioneering work on probability was an attempt to quantify reasoning about statements that are not exactly true or false.John
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