I am not really objecting to your comment. I think there are a good number of interpretations that are correct and a good number of interpretations that are false, and importantly, I think there might be interesting discussion to be had about both branches of the conversation (i.e. in some worlds where I think you are wrong, you would be glad about me disagreeing because I might bring up some interesting points, and in some worlds where I think you are right you would be glad about me agreeing because we might have some interesting conversations).
Popping up a meta-level, to talk about charity: I think a charitable reading doesn’t necessarily mean that I choose the interpretation that will cause us to agree on the object-level, instead I think about which of the interpretations seem to have the most truth to them in a deeper sense, and which broader conversational patterns would cause the most learning for all the conversational participants. In the above, my curiosity was drawn towards there potentially being a deeper disagreement here about human universals, since I can indeed imagine us having differing thoughts on this that might be worth exploring.
Agreement with all of the above. I just don’t want to mistake [truth that can be extracted from thinking about a statement] for [what the statement was intended to mean by its author].
I am not really objecting to your comment. I think there are a good number of interpretations that are correct and a good number of interpretations that are false, and importantly, I think there might be interesting discussion to be had about both branches of the conversation (i.e. in some worlds where I think you are wrong, you would be glad about me disagreeing because I might bring up some interesting points, and in some worlds where I think you are right you would be glad about me agreeing because we might have some interesting conversations).
Popping up a meta-level, to talk about charity: I think a charitable reading doesn’t necessarily mean that I choose the interpretation that will cause us to agree on the object-level, instead I think about which of the interpretations seem to have the most truth to them in a deeper sense, and which broader conversational patterns would cause the most learning for all the conversational participants. In the above, my curiosity was drawn towards there potentially being a deeper disagreement here about human universals, since I can indeed imagine us having differing thoughts on this that might be worth exploring.
Agreement with all of the above. I just don’t want to mistake [truth that can be extracted from thinking about a statement] for [what the statement was intended to mean by its author].