Interpreting others presupposes shared rationality and a common world.

Evidence

Quine’s argument has been taken much further by Davidson, for whom interpreting another’s speech consists in ascribing to her broadly the same beliefs as one holds to be true oneself, on the grounds that to entertain the possibility that the speaker’s beliefs are systematically false is to deny her rationality. Even when this Principle of Charity is weakened to a Principle of Humanity which simply requires that the speaker’s beliefs be ones that it is intelligible for someone in her situation to hold rather than beliefs that the hearer herself holds to be true, the underlying thrust of the theory remains the same: interpretation involves assuming that the speaker is rational in a sense that involves setting her in the context of the world which she shares, along with their common human nature, with the hearer. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 420

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Other’s existence gives rise to collective ownership of world-appropriation techniques.; Agreement in judgments stems from shared human nature, not just shared beliefs — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 419; Collective identity is a shared place in the social world (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Social possibility rests on well-founded expectations about others’ conduct #expands (0.80)
• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517
• Shared attention builds a collective rather than merely private reality #expands (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 121
• Agreement in judgments stems from shared human nature, not just shared beliefs #expands (0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 419
• Collective identity is a shared place in the social world #expands (0.72)
• Denying shared humanity creates non-relation rather than strangeness within a group #contradicts (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 400