Rationality and Charity

Quine and others have recommended principles of charity which discourage judgments of irrationality. Such principles have been proposed to govern translation, psychology, and economics. After comparing principles of charity of different degrees of severity, we argue that the stronger principles are likely to block understanding of human behavior and impede progress toward improving it. We support a moderate principle of charity which leaves room for empirically justified judgments of irrationality.

[1]  Stephen P. Stich,et al.  Justification and the Psychology of Human Reasoning , 1980, Philosophy of Science.

[2]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Insensitivity to sample bias: Generalizing from atypical cases , 1980 .

[3]  Willard Van Orman Quine,et al.  Word and Object , 1960 .

[4]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect Theory : An Analysis of Decision under Risk Author ( s ) : , 2007 .

[5]  A. Tversky,et al.  The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. , 1981, Science.

[6]  P. Thagard.  Beyond Utility Theory , 1981 .

[7]  J. Agassi,et al.  The problem of the rationality of magic. , 1967, The British journal of sociology.

[8]  T. Fine,et al.  The Emergence of Probability , 1976 .

[9]  D. Davidson.  Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride , 1976 .

[10]  Paul Thagard.  In defence of deductive inference , 1979 .

[11]  A. Tversky,et al.  Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness , 1972 .

[12]  L. J. Savage,et al.  The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk , 1948, Journal of Political Economy.

[13]  W. Quine.  Ontological Relativity and Other Essays , 1969 .

[14]  William Harper,et al.  Counterfactuals and Two Kinds of Expected Utility , 1978 .

[15]  H. Simon,et al.  Models of Man. , 1957 .

[16]  Alvin I. Goldman,et al.  Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition , 1978 .

[17]  A. Tversky,et al.  On the psychology of prediction , 1973 .

[18]  L. Ross,et al.  Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. , 1981 .

[19]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[20]  J. Singer,et al.  Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. , 1962, Psychological review.

[21]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. , 1977 .

[22]  Colin McGinn,et al.  Charity, Interpretation, and Belief , 1977 .

[23]  J. March.  Bounded rationality, ambiguity, and the engineering of choice , 1978 .

[24]  K. Arrow.  Essays in the theory of risk-bearing , 1958 .

[25]  L. Cohen.  Can human irrationality be experimentally demonstrated? , 1981, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[26]  R. Hogarth,et al.  BEHAVIORAL DECISION THEORY: PROCESSES OF JUDGMENT AND CHOICE , 1981 .

[27]  George I. Mavrodes,et al.  'Is' and 'ought' , 1964 .

[28]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Psychology of Reasoning: Structure and Content , 1972 .

[29]  P. Thagard,et al.  Hegel, science, and set theory , 1982 .

[30]  L. Cohen,et al.  On the psychology of prediction: Whose is the fallacy? , 1979, Cognition.

[31]  Donald Davidson,et al.  On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme , 1973 .

[32]  Paul Thagard,et al.  From the Descriptive to the Normative in Psychology and Logic , 1982, Philosophy of Science.

[33]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty , 1982 .

[34]  Richard C. Jeffrey.  Savage's Omelet , 1976, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

[35]  David H. Krantz,et al.  Inductive reasoning: Competence or skill? , 1983, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[36]  W. Lycan.  “Is” and “ought” in cognitive science , 1981, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.