So, a few thoughts on the example of “theodicy”, about which I’m afraid I feel roughly as Raemon does though not necessarily for the same reasons.
For me, “theodicy” already has a meaning firmly attached, and it does kinda map to part of what you’re describing in your post with “theodicy” in the title. Unfortunately, that part—so it seems to me—already has a perfectly good name: “the principle of charity”. PoC says to interpret what people say or do in the way that puts them in the best light, and that’s exactly what you’re describing.
The extra thing you’re adding to that already-existing concept, the thing that (if I understand right) you want the name “theodicy” attached to, is a particular notion of what counts as putting someone in the best light: treat them as (in order of priority) good, smart, perceptive, currently-competent, and put all those ahead of assuming your observations were accurate and representative. And the only connection between this “hierarchy of innocuousness” and the concept usually known as “theodicy” is that there’s this one post where you talk about being charitable to people and analogizes it to theodicy, and in that post you propose this specific hierarchy of innocuousness.
So I think this is the thing that bugs me: your post is about three different things: (1) the general idea of making benign assumptions about others, contra the fundamental attribution error; (2) the idea of doing so according to a “hierarchy of innocuousness”; (3) the specific hierarchy of innocuousness you proposed. Of these, the proposed name “theodicy” is a decent match for #1, but (a) we don’t need a new name for #1 because we already have “principle of charity” and (b) you’re trying to attach it to (I think) #1, #2 and #3 all together.
For me, (b) makes “theodicy” a positively bad name for the concept—because there’s another concept in the same vicinity that it wants to attach itself to. The term “wants” to match to just #1, at least in my head, and trying to use it for all three feels like you’re trying to make your preferred form of being-charitable-about-people be correct by definition. As if I wrote a post called “Having good taste” and it turned out that I wanted to define “good taste” to mean liking Bach, dark chocolate and pizza more than Eraserhead, milk chocolate and caviar.
Now, if I’m drawing the right inferences from your response when Raemon suggested “Theodicy and the hierarchy of charity”, what looks to me like a bug looks to you like a feature: you don’t like Raemon’s proposal because it separates these two things, and you want to keep them together. I think that’s an error. They are conceptually separate because one can have either without the other; you could try to think well of people without having a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit, and you could (less plausibly) have a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit but hold that it’s only rarely that there’s any point trying to think well of people. (I guess you could use the list as a guide to how much any given person sucks, by finding the highest level at which you think they fail.) But in practice, saying “Conor’s hierarchy of charity” (or whatever) will not only convey the idea of a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit and your particular suggestion for what that list should be, but also (via the term “charity”, if nothing else) remind readers/listeners of the context for that list, namely as a thing to use when applying the principle of charity to avoid the fundamental attribution error.
So, a few thoughts on the example of “theodicy”, about which I’m afraid I feel roughly as Raemon does though not necessarily for the same reasons.
For me, “theodicy” already has a meaning firmly attached, and it does kinda map to part of what you’re describing in your post with “theodicy” in the title. Unfortunately, that part—so it seems to me—already has a perfectly good name: “the principle of charity”. PoC says to interpret what people say or do in the way that puts them in the best light, and that’s exactly what you’re describing.
The extra thing you’re adding to that already-existing concept, the thing that (if I understand right) you want the name “theodicy” attached to, is a particular notion of what counts as putting someone in the best light: treat them as (in order of priority) good, smart, perceptive, currently-competent, and put all those ahead of assuming your observations were accurate and representative. And the only connection between this “hierarchy of innocuousness” and the concept usually known as “theodicy” is that there’s this one post where you talk about being charitable to people and analogizes it to theodicy, and in that post you propose this specific hierarchy of innocuousness.
So I think this is the thing that bugs me: your post is about three different things: (1) the general idea of making benign assumptions about others, contra the fundamental attribution error; (2) the idea of doing so according to a “hierarchy of innocuousness”; (3) the specific hierarchy of innocuousness you proposed. Of these, the proposed name “theodicy” is a decent match for #1, but (a) we don’t need a new name for #1 because we already have “principle of charity” and (b) you’re trying to attach it to (I think) #1, #2 and #3 all together.
For me, (b) makes “theodicy” a positively bad name for the concept—because there’s another concept in the same vicinity that it wants to attach itself to. The term “wants” to match to just #1, at least in my head, and trying to use it for all three feels like you’re trying to make your preferred form of being-charitable-about-people be correct by definition. As if I wrote a post called “Having good taste” and it turned out that I wanted to define “good taste” to mean liking Bach, dark chocolate and pizza more than Eraserhead, milk chocolate and caviar.
Now, if I’m drawing the right inferences from your response when Raemon suggested “Theodicy and the hierarchy of charity”, what looks to me like a bug looks to you like a feature: you don’t like Raemon’s proposal because it separates these two things, and you want to keep them together. I think that’s an error. They are conceptually separate because one can have either without the other; you could try to think well of people without having a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit, and you could (less plausibly) have a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit but hold that it’s only rarely that there’s any point trying to think well of people. (I guess you could use the list as a guide to how much any given person sucks, by finding the highest level at which you think they fail.) But in practice, saying “Conor’s hierarchy of charity” (or whatever) will not only convey the idea of a prioritized list of kinds-of-merit and your particular suggestion for what that list should be, but also (via the term “charity”, if nothing else) remind readers/listeners of the context for that list, namely as a thing to use when applying the principle of charity to avoid the fundamental attribution error.