Talk:Principle of charity

[Untitled]
The reference "Daniel Dennett, 'Mid-Term Examination' p. 363" is a bit mysterious. I don't find a book by that title on Amazon or at my library's website, and a search for "Dennett Mid-Term Examination" on google yields nothing useful. Is this some kind of typo or other error? --The Sarcastic Fringehead, Aug 16 2:30 PST

The search in my Dennett collection however was a bit more fruitful - the reference is to chapter 10 in 'The Intentional Stance'. The page number given is also accurate for the same. I've amended the entry to account for this. -- Duncan Crowe

Link to Darner's "Code of Conduct..."
The original link to Darner's Code is now dead. I provided a new, live link to it in the External Links section, replacing the original one.Isokrates 20:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Assume Good Faith
Wikipedia has its own principle of charity, which seems like a notable practical extension of these ideas. Self-reference isn't very encyclopedic, but is there room in the article for a reference to the Wikipedia policy: "Assume Good Faith?" --Thomas B&#9816; talk 06:05, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Pablo Mayrgundter (talk) 10:26, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

John Stuart Mill
It seems worth citing John Stuart Mill's position on the matter, since he was greatly influential on Enlightment-era rational ideals, and On Liberty covers this subject more in-depth that the currently cited sources. I would edit it myself but I haven't edited Wikipedia in years and am timid to just jump in again. Relevant text from On Liberty:

"...The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own...He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion...Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form...Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess...nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light."

(A copy of the full text can be found here: https://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/two.html )

lunaverse (talk) 22:23, 15 June 2020 (UTC)