What Does It Mean to Be Charitable When We Argue? With Dr. Katharina Stevens

The argumentative exchange of reasons is often seen as the most equality-affirming, respectful way in which parties can engage with each other’s minds. But for argumentation to fulfill this promise, we often have to invest extra effort. One of the places where such extra effort may be required is when we try to understand the reasons that the person we are arguing with is trying to communicate to us. This can be difficult, especially when they are not very good speakers, or when we strongly disagree with their worldview. To capture this, we often say that arguing requires us to interpret the other charitably. But what does that mean? And is charity always helpful, or can it even be harmful to the person we are trying to understand? In this talk, we will explore all the ways that charity can go wrong … and what is required for it to go right. Speaker: Dr. Katharina Stevens Katharina Stevens has worked in the Ethics of Argument for seven years. She is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge, where she holds a Board of Governors Research Chair on the Ethics of Argumentation. She is also a co-editor of the Argumentation journal Informal Logic. She is developing a non-ideal role-ethics for argumentation and a textbook on ethical arguing and has published in virtues of argumentation and the role of adversariality in argument.