A Problem of Charitability and the Line Between Too Much and Too Little

Hopefully this precise doesn't come off as too much of a rant, but the thoughts behind it certainly were born from the emotions associated with rants. I want to talk about the troubling occurrence of people not having an appropriate balance between relative acceptance and further inquiry. In the field of philosophy, it is common for us to talk about a concept called CHARITABILITY. This is the concept of allowing a predicate of some sort to hold true for the sake of argument. Sometimes philosophers like to be overly charitable, and allow things which are practically impossible to hold true. I don't want to focus on that form, because the results of a conversation or argument that is granted as overly charitable often only produces fantasy or fiction. I want to focus on the kind of charitable that people give when a predicate can be true, but they don't believe it yet. When you are charitable to a predicate, you are left with two routes. One route is to move on and prove some other grand point that is a composition of the predicate. This is fine, but in the end, it doesn't really prove the conclusion because one (or more) of the predicates leading up to that conclusion were granted without necessary and sufficient reason. The other route is to then begin supporting the predicate that was being charitably accepted. This, in essence, moves the predicate to the spot of the conclusion and now you're tasked with the creation or unveiling of other predicates to support it.

All of the above may be written in a very formalized manner which would make the most sense to a seasoned philosopher or a practitioner of formal logic, but truth be told, it is a process each and every person goes through every day. As of late, I've been finding myself in a position where people are requesting too much information about a given predicate and not being charitable enough to reach a conclusion. I stated above that it is acceptable (and preferable) to take the route of justifying a predicate, instead of only being charitable and moving on, but there is a certain point to where you should stop inquiring. If memory serves me correct, this has a good resemblance to one of the points of Agrippa's Trilemma - 'progress ad infinitum'. Essentially, if you wanted, you could continue a line of further inquisition about each predicate in an argument infinitely. But then, if you did this, you'd be the infinite skeptic, which in my opinion is a bad thing. I feel too many people are falling into the trap of infinite skepticism. To be rationally skeptical is a good thing, but you've got to be able to settle on things sooner, rather than later, otherwise you will halt progress. Einstein didn't create his Theory of General Relativity by lulling on infinite skepticism. Could you go in and start to question every little detail about the Theory of General Relativity? Absolutely, and I'm sure many people are doing just that. But frankly, it is being done after-the-fact, which is better than being done to excess while the theory is first struggling to survive. Science has embraced the idea of a "theory." A theory in science is very specific, and it deals with an observation that has been seen to hold true under a great deal of scenarios which can be either physical, mathematical/logical or philosophical. The more observations that can be collected for a theory, the stronger and more prominent that theory becomes. A contrasting example could be the String Theory, which has no physical observations. It has some pretty convincing mathematical and logical observations, but not much else. That is the main reason why science hasn't fully embraced theories like String Theory.

Ultimately, as many things do, it comes down to a balance. We need to draw the line between acceptance of a predicate and progress ad infinitum. Too many people in common society are being too critical and skeptical of things, to the point where it can be damaging not only to their own personal progress, but to the progress of society. Let's face it, there are any number of ways that a person can gain some form of power, and if a person in power is structured appropriately, it can be devastating. It is probably best to try and avoid some of the tangents which can arise from here, after all, what I deem to be progress, someone else may disagree with. These notions become largely a matter of opinion. It is why we have politics. I view a set of notions as progress while someone else has a completely different set of notions. I believe that increased efforts into Stem Cell Research is progress, while many others do not. But I did not want to speak much to opinions and politics in this precise. The point home is, do practice a reasonable level of charity and learn to avoid progress ad infinitum, else risk becoming a danger to not only yourself, but to society.