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INTRODUCTION
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone…but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
—Edward Sapir, “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”
Are we really “at the mercy” of the particular language we grew up speaking?
Far from it.
Language may shape the way we think about the world to some small extent, but not so much that we can be said to live in distinct worlds. The very fact that we can communicate with each other and translate other languages into our own means there must be a vast body of belief we all share—a body of belief which, taken on the whole, must be true. To put it in a snappier way: Truth is the condition that makes language possible. This, at the very least, is what I hope to demonstrate in this book.
This is not to say every single opinion must be true; after all, surely some of the beliefs we hold contradict each other. And I certainly don’t mean we should blindly embrace the status quo either. What I mean is, ordinary opinion, on the whole, has things basically right, and a sensitive and careful distillation of what is presented there is the best approach to seeking truth. But so loud are the voices in favor of old-fashioned skepticism, postmodern relativism, and a plurality of worlds, and so thoroughly do they dominate our culture that it often appears as if there are no thoughtful voices in favor of the plain truth. However hopeless it may be to go against the tide, I think common sense deserves a hearing. Some of what I have to say will be drawn from Donald Davidson’s work, which stretches back to the early sixties and has won great respect in academic philosophy. Despite this, within the university he is not well known outside of philosophy departments, even less to the general public. I hope to change that.
The principle of charity is the key concept we take from Davidson, but it is not my goal only to expound his ideas. I intend to extend his principle of charity—what I will from here on out call the principle of generosity—into areas far beyond the restrained linguistic studies to which Davidson had the prudence to confine himself. I intend, without apology, to push the principle into areas of literary criticism, religion, cosmology, and the history of philosophy. I rather doubt that he would approve of my enthusiastic extension of his ideas, so contrary is it to the spirit of analytic philosophy. Nevertheless, that is where I believe the ideas go. I want to follow their lead.
Why am I calling the principle generosity? Merely because that was the word that popped into my head when I first conceived of the idea. You see, it was not through reading Davidson that I came into sympathy with his viewpoint. I was struck one day by a very simple fact: natural language is radically ambiguous, which means an abundance of generosity is needed to interpret it. When I realized how important this matter was, when I, who am not well-trained in the philosophy of language, realized that the meaning of truth and its relationship to common belief depended on this, I spoke with friends knowledgeable in this area who pointed me in the direction of Davidson. A year’s reading made me ever more optimistic about my original idea and somewhat in awe of the care with which Davidson had already worked it out. I think I can honestly say that never in my adult life did I more gladly or more profitably apprentice myself to a contemporary thinker’s work. But I still like the simplicity and clarity of the way these notions first came to me, and that is how I will present them here—in ordinary language. These I will elaborate through some of Davidson’s ideas, but it goes without saying that Davidson is in no way responsible for my adaptations, and for what I botch I ask forgiveness. Even so, I have a project to complete, and in any case I do not think my temperament would have allowed me to go at it another way.
Neal Weiner
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Contents
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Chapter 1: The Principle of Generosity
Chapter 2: Violations of the Principle of Generosity
Chapter 3: The Poetry of Ordinary Language
Chapter 4: What Language is Not
Chapter 5: Etymology and Truth
Chapter 6: Social Influences on Semantic Change
Chapter 7: Politics and Relativism
Chapter 9: The Origin of Language
Chapter 10: Radical Interpretation
Chapter 11: How We Recognize Language as Language
Chapter 13: The Heart of Truth
Chapter 14: Generosity Beyond the Sentence
Chapter 15: The Interpretive Ideal
Chapter 16: Interpreting the World through Generosity
Bonus Chapter: The Socratic Dialectic and Generosity
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