Charity Implies Meta-Charity |
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Authors: | ROY SORENSEN |
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Affiliation: | Dartmouth College |
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Abstract: | The principle of charity says that all agents are rational. The principle of meta-charity says that all agents believe all agents are rational. My thesis is that the arguments which are used to support charity also support meta-charity. Meta-charity implies meta-meta-charity. By recursion, the principle of charity implies that it is common knowledge. But there appears to be intelligent, well-informed disagreement with the principle of charity. So if the entailment thesis holds, opponents of the principle of charity have a new objection to the principle. Defenders of the principle of charity must either refute the entailment thesis or accept much stronger consequences than they expected. "As I am, so I see."—Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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