Verstehen, Charity, and Schemas
I was writing this in ‘askphilosophy’ in reddit, but they are closed. They continue to sort out a dispute regarding their APIs, and the end result or one of them at least is that I could not post this there tonight.
So I figured I would share this here. Not the same audience but there is perhaps some overlap. We will see.
Anyway, here it goes. . .
I read Donald Davidson way back but still cling to his ideas regarding the principle of charity and its relationship to truth. Of course, you also have the idea of Christian charity, which was I believe introduced by Augustine. Davidson also has an essay challenging the idea of a conceptual schema, but conceptual schemas if you look at the anthropology or the cognitive science basically explain the same thing-making sense of others.
Lastly, there is the idea of Verstehen, A german term which in a nutshell could best or at last quickly be termed understanding through empathy. Has anyone tripped over this before. I have seen the term referenced and am now reading some sociology and especially Max Weber.
Anyway, again a similar issue. All attempting to understanding another. I am right now reading an American text from the 1970s looking at the German term, but really all focused on the same issue.
Oh well, only took me 30 years to put those various pieces of intellectual history together. Granted, it is largely speculation here in my two or three paragraphs. Has anyone seen a proper look at the subject of these-piecing them and the like together?
Now that I take a few steps it is really not a surprise.
I suppose they are all an answer to the skeptic.
