It is true that normally, taking people at their word is charitable. But if someone says that a concept is meaningless (when discussing it in a theoretical fashion), and then proceeds to use informally in ordinary conversation (as I conjectured that most people do with race and intelligence) then we cannot take them literally at their word. I think that something like my interpretation is the most charitable in this case.
First, I’m not so sure: if someone is actually inconsistent, then pointing out the inconsistency may be the better (more charitable?) thing to do rather than pretending the person had made the closest consistent argument.
For example: there are a lot of academics who attack reason itself as fundamentally racist, imperialistic, etc. They back this up with something that looks like an argument. I think they are simply being inconsistent and contradictory, rather than meaning something deep not apparent at first glance.
More importantly, I think your conjecture is wrong.
On intelligence, I believe that many of the people who think intelligence does not exist would further object to a statement like “A is smarter than B,” thinking it a form of ableism.
On race, the situation is more complicated: the “official line” is that race does not exist, but racism does. That is, people who say race does not exist also believe that people classify humans in terms of perceived race, even though the concept itself has no meaning (no “realness in a genetic sense” as one of the authors I cited in this thread puts it) . It is only in this sense that they would accept statements of the form “A and B are an interracial couple.”
It is true that normally, taking people at their word is charitable. But if someone says that a concept is meaningless (when discussing it in a theoretical fashion), and then proceeds to use informally in ordinary conversation (as I conjectured that most people do with race and intelligence) then we cannot take them literally at their word. I think that something like my interpretation is the most charitable in this case.
First, I’m not so sure: if someone is actually inconsistent, then pointing out the inconsistency may be the better (more charitable?) thing to do rather than pretending the person had made the closest consistent argument.
For example: there are a lot of academics who attack reason itself as fundamentally racist, imperialistic, etc. They back this up with something that looks like an argument. I think they are simply being inconsistent and contradictory, rather than meaning something deep not apparent at first glance.
More importantly, I think your conjecture is wrong.
On intelligence, I believe that many of the people who think intelligence does not exist would further object to a statement like “A is smarter than B,” thinking it a form of ableism.
One example, just to show what I mean:
http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/23/ableist-word-profile-intelligence/
On race, the situation is more complicated: the “official line” is that race does not exist, but racism does. That is, people who say race does not exist also believe that people classify humans in terms of perceived race, even though the concept itself has no meaning (no “realness in a genetic sense” as one of the authors I cited in this thread puts it) . It is only in this sense that they would accept statements of the form “A and B are an interracial couple.”
Ableism is a lot more recent (or at least more recently popular) than the idea that intelligence does not exist. I don’t think it’s very relevant